Which Way Lies True
by JaxLass
Summary: Post AWE. Stranded on an island during a squall with a homicidal dinghy, Jack's survival skills will be tested, abused, and tossed out with the tide.
1. Blame It On The Rum

**Disclaimer: Not mine, they are. I only claim Victor Varley, Hector and the **_**Flashy Fury**_

**WHICH WAY LIES TRUE**

Post AWE Prequel to **HER LOVE IN ABSENTIA**.

Summary: After leaving Gibbs in Tortuga, Jack is about to meet his first challenge on the open sea in a dinghy.

**Part 1 - Blame It On The Rum**

The warm haziness of the morning felt familiar. The soft, constant slap of water lulled him into a sluggish daze, leaving one dulled eye to linger on the sagging sail above him. When had the wind deserted him? He tipped his hat lower and tried to refold the coat under his head, but the last vestiges of comfort had fled with dawn and an empty stomach.

With a growled curse, Jack sat up in the cramped dinghy and squinted toward the flat, gray-gold empty horizon.

Bugger. What he would not do for his spyglasses.

But like everything else in his pitiable existence, they were aboard the _Pearl_ - stolen by that lowly, traitorous cur, Barbossa.

Ha, Barbossa thought to take his ship to find the _Aqua de Vida_, did he? He smiled to himself and patted the rolled piece taken from Sao Feng's map tucked inside his sash next to his pistol.

Of course, he would trade it for his ship. He'd trade anything he owned to have the _Pearl_ back.

Except for his soul. That he was keeping _this _time.

Even if William Turner wanted to offer him a good deal in return, the memory of the Locker was too unnervingly fresh.

Nope. Done with the dealing of the souls. There's other ways to find immortality. He fingered the edge of the map, consoling himself that all was not lost with the _Pearl _gone.

_Aqua de Vida _then his _Pearl._

No man stole Jack Sparrow's ship from him_ twice _and_ kept_ it

_Captain _Jack Sparrow.

_'I don't see your ship, Captain Sparrow.'_

_'I'm in the market, as it were.'_

Smug bastard, Norrington. Could have made a decent pirate outta him, but he had to go off siding with his worst enemy. Pity, that.

A sudden breeze from the south twirled the long ends of his faded bandana, tugging at his loose sleeves. Jack quickly glanced over his shoulder, the sailor in him determining that the wind was coming from the southeast. He rose to adjust the lines of the lone sail, hesitated, and then frowned.

No, not yet, mate.

One arm absently hooking the narrow mast, Jack untied the compass from his belt, murmured a quiet, hopeful chant, and then snapped it open.

Bugger! The bloody useless thing spun in a dizzy circle! But why? The rum bottle was two days empty, the few provisions gone that he had managed to get before leaving the drunken sod, Gibbs, in a dim tavern. Jack missed the old pirate. Didn't like them tiny boats, he'd insisted. But when pressed, his shamed confession that he couldn't swim had been laughable and sad. Seems he shared that trait with half the military garrison in Port Royal.

Jack shook the compass again in desperation. The unreliable red arrow sped around, reversed itself and started to wind back, but wobbled to a stop, pointing east to the far left of the squatting sun.

He looked again - out upon a frustratingly empty sea.

The wind wanted to lead him northwest. Years of sailing by stars, the direction of the sun and his gut told him that was the right way.

Another annoyed shake of the compass. Still settling on northeast.

The limp sail caught a wisp of the new breeze, flapping weakly, urging the tiny boat to follow. Jack regained control with a deft yank on the line and the boat sat quietly again.

"Oi, they'll be none of that," he declared. "Who's captain of this... boat, 'ey?"

The horizon had brightened during his brief tussle with the errant sail and now he could see _something_ out there; some shape tinged with faint greenish-ness. Small island. First sighting of land in almost two days. It didn't look like much. Square-like mound, still too far away to see any decent details.

Food, his ravenous stomach begged. Fruit. Raw fish. Don't care. The _Aqua de Vida _will wait.

Behind him, the wind blew harder, the flailing sail attempting to catch its cooling breath and wrestle with him for the boat again. This time, Jack ignored the sublet shifting. Even as he looked over his shoulder, he felt the quiet stir in the air. Already, the darkening mass in the south blotted out half the morning sky and a muted rumble carried ominously over the white-capped water.

Forgetting the compass, Jack plopped down in the dinghy and hastily snatched up the small oar. He figured that he should have an hour; maybe less before the squall was upon him. Could he make it to the island?

After losing several minutes furling the sail to keep from scooping the storm-born wind, Jack turned the rocking dinghy in the direction of the distant island. Yet even as he rowed, wearily shifting from one side to the other, he watched uneasily as spreading angry gray clouds swallowed a fledgling sun. Rolling white waves lifted the small boat; the sea buffeting and tossing it like driftwood, trying to wrench the oar from Jack's grip.

He'd endured too many bad storms aboard ships to believe he'd survive very long in this dinghy.

Jack's last glimpse of the nearing island, as the rain started to pelt him, was of a long gray-green stretch of hilly land, dipping into what appeared to be a chasm, possibly a tiny cove, before the cliff soared up in a high plateau and then dropped off sharply into the sea.

No spit of land then.

As he paddled closer, a heavy mist obscured the hillside, leaving visible only a tiny expanse of a pale white beach ringed with palm trees.

Exhausted, arms and shoulders brutally aching with strain, Jack somehow managed to keep the dinghy afloat, acutely aware that the water sloshing around his sodden boots did not only come from the sky. Suddenly the plunging oar hit sand and sunk deep, tearing Jack out of the dinghy. He yelped in surprise as he somersaulted backward into shallow water, the little boat plummeting past him to ride up onto the beach. Jack just sat in the swirling water, raging at himself for not thinking about shoals. Fortunately, he groaned, no one had seen that rather undignified acrobatic feat.

Cold rain beat at him as he shook himself and climbed heavily to his wet feet. Wiping his eyes from the dripping bandana, he could see where the little boat's keel had furrowed the sand straight to the outcropping of palms, then tipped over on it's right side. A low, outstretched palm trunk had kept it from capsizing, and now supported the top of the dinghy's mast. From where he stood, the little boat didn't look too damaged, just thoroughly worn out - like him. He couldn't even bring himself to pick up the empty rum bottle as it floated past his legs.

"It's all your bloody fault," he called after it in irritation. "Had I not needed a drink, never would I have left my ship, not with bloody Barbossa in the same town as me!!"

It didn't make him feel any better.

Continued:

**Part 2 – And You Call Yourself A Shelter?**


	2. You Call Yourself A Shelter?

Summary: Beaten by a fierce sea squall, Jack tries to make the best of island life - but battling with a beached dinghy amid a downpour wasn't figured into his plans for survival.

**Part 2 - And You Call Yourself A Shelter?**

It was just a ragged hat. Not like he'd lost an old companion, really.

_"Mr. Gibbs, you may throw my hat. Now, go and get it."_

Jack trudged from the shallow surf onto crunching sand, too weary to acknowledge the now-familiar haunting echo of voices. They would, he suspected, win his attention eventually, as they were wont to do since he had left their mocking physical manifestations behind in an arid purgatory of his own mortal dread.

"_My one and only love is the sea."_

"Well, she bloody cast you right out like a spurned suitor, did she not, man? What think you of her fealty now?"

He heard no whimsical response to his challenge, and for a momentary respite, he could ignore the slivers of rain trying to pummel his spirit into sullen submission. High sea-driven winds lashed sodden plaits of hair about his neck and tore ferociously at his drenched clothing as he stood on the beach to silently survey his bleak domain.

Not all that promising, but then what bloody island in the middle of the ocean honestly was?

Leastwise for one Jack Sparrow.

Truly, if there wasn't some fool painted like a bloody native wanting to roast him over flaming logs then someone else was setting his hoarde of rum afire while lecturing tiresomely on the evils of said drink. And lest he forget the _loads_ of fun had by himself, Norrington and William Turner whilst they so very cleverly lead slimey 'ol fish-face's crew straight to the bloody forbidden chest!

As a nervous afterthought, Jack patted the rain-slicked bulk of his pistol stuffed in the dripping sash, then sighed as he recalled how powder would not ignite when wet - wet as was everything else presently on his person.

Oh, bugger.

"Aye, so it's come to this now, has it? You've bloody marooned _yourself_..." Self-recrimination tasted of bitter seawater and sour bile from an empty belly as he solemnly watched the surf ride the discarded bottle back into the gray ocean. "And you without a pitiable drop of rum. A sad observation unto itself what you _really_ are, mate."

Jack impatiently swatted wet hair off his face, narrowed eyes travelling up the great inward curve of towering red cliffs to his right to follow the mist-hazed plateau until it climbed steeply again into the invisible hillside to the left before meeting a sharp drop into a narrow canyon where the hidden cove likely cut a good chunk out of the craggy volcanic rock face. If there was more up there, the persistant gray sheets of rain concealed it.

He'd seen islands like this before - barren, mountainous and forboddingly untamed.

_"Cap'n, hurry! It be this way back to the ship! Jack, did ya' not hear them frightful drums out there?"_

Shivering, he turned his reluctant gaze back to the beach before him. The advent of shelter or food found from the thin scattering of palms seemed even less promising. Dragging himself a few steps closer through miring sand, Jack could see green patches of the lower hillside, its sloping incline a treacherous track of sharp, jutting stone and twisted gullies allowing the uneven spill of a tiny stream. He also spotted a thick growth of young mangroves close by an overhanging cluster of boulders about the size of a small ship. No dubious shelter could be afforded beneath that because visible rivulets of water trickled down through time-carved sides of the jagged rock into an unseen pool.

No fruit-bearing plants to be had anywhere.

_"Give it here, Miss Swann, please? You're goin' to be needin' my sword to break apart that coconut." _

The possible prospect of fresh water, however, failed to cheer a bedraggled Jack Sparrow. Resigned to his apparent solitude, he let his knees fold under him, too weak from hunger and fatigue to seek any further for shelter or sustenance. The chilling morning rain, unfortunately, had no pity on a despairing pirate and bludgeoned him back to his feet, herding him in a wobbly half-crawl, half-stagger toward a beckoning lopsided dinghy. He only managed to trod on his trailing scarf once and then barely registered the cradling trunk's precariously fragile hold as wind stirred the resting mast pole, shifting it slightly.

That was his first mistake as island governor.

Trembling from fatigue and penetrating cold, Jack fled beneath the leaning palm in hopes of escaping the worst of the storm. But no sooner had he shed his baldric, coat and sash when he noted, in mild alarm, a significant lack of wood roof to his humble shelter. Unfortunately, no amount of furious tugging, yanking or fitful cursing at the bowed frame would dislodge the sand-bound keel. He considered using the remaining oar to dig the boat loose, but abandoned that idea when he nearly passed out trying to prise it from the dinghy's stubborn grip.

Stupid, Jack.

He never had been able to wrench the bloody rusted thing free since the day he'd set sail from Tortuga.

He had a frivolous thought as he lay awaiting the tumultous sea and clouded-darkened sky to properly readjust their own bearings: Now would be a wonderful time for a ship to rescue him even if he honestly had no idea where in the ocean he might be.

For fact, he knew, to his chagrin, that the odd compass wrapped in his sash would tell him nothing of his location. A fickle sea goddess cared nothing for a man's sense of stable direction in his life, pandering only to the stronger focus of his misleading desires.

_"It cannot geeve ye want yer wantin', Jack, if ye doan know what it be yerself."_

Freedom. _The Pearl_. Open sea.

And, okay, maybe something... _more _of which only Tia Dalma's canny perception had known Jack could not ever ask for.

_"You have outdone yourself, Mr. Sparrow. I daresay, she will not be as favorable with your heart as I have been with your worthless life.'_

Curse Norrington for being observant.

Too late, stranded on an unknown storm-torn island and near physical collapse, Jack finally understood that he had never needed a swamp witch's vexing riddles to tell him what he'd always been internally aware he could _not_ have.

_"Wait, Jack, didn't Barbossa tell you? Will and I, we were married by him during all the fighting..."_

NO! Enough!! Get up, man! Move or die!! You've no one here to help you!!

The sudden white-hot frustration firing through his veins, sadly, had no power to raise his exhausted body from weighted cold sand and left Jack prone next to the palm tree. He didn't think the rain could get him too much wetter as he glared ominously at the tilted sail whipping below the palm trunk like a white flag signalling inevitable surrender.

Had the strength been anywhere in him to move then, he would have reached up and yanked the offending symbol from his sight.

Jack was not to know, however, that the flapping sheet also blocked a disturbing view of the leaning mast pole gradually pulling free with each lurch of the palm tree fighting a growing wind.

"And you call yourself a shelter?" He groaned, futilely kicking the side of the boat.

As if in defiant reply, wood creaked. Then, with a grinding clunk that startled him, the wicked dinghy relinquished the long-imprisoned oar, dropping it right toward a hapless pirate. Aghast, Jack hastily twisted aside on his right shoulder only to slam his forehead into the rough tree trunk and catch a stinging blow from the flat paddle across his left hip.

"Yeeooww!" He yipped, falling onto his back again, the dull ringing in his ears briefly deafening him to the storm. He rubbed his palm over bruised flesh under his sodden breeches in indignation. "Ah, so it's a bloody war you're wanting with me, 'ey?"

His only answer came from the shriek of wind tearing across the frothing water behind him to abuse his meager world and allow more water to pour through the wide palm leaves onto his numbed being. With an aggrieved look at the flying sail, Jack mustered the energy to roll laboriously inside the dinghy and tuck himself into the driest corner, gathering up his damp coat to pillow his head.

"Not so good," he dismally observed when fat drops of water from the wooden ledge above splashed onto his boots. But when the weary pirate tried to curl further into himself, he bit back a moan as his bruised hip protested. Jack looked upward beseechingly. "If you've done your worse, kindly allow me a little rest now, 'ey? I can likely fight later."

At this point, he wasn't really sure if he had addressed a heavenly diety or just the water-ladden heavens themselves.

It hardly mattered.

Sometime during that dreary morning his plea was granted. The clamorous battering of wind and rain on shuddering wood went unheeded as sleep finally claimed Jack Sparrow. Despite wet clothes, hands and feet numb from exposure, and suffered bumps and bruises, lingering heavy drowsiness pulled him into slumber and nothing a riled nature hurled from the surrounding sea disturbed the man huddled inside the tilting dinghy. Nothing until hours later, close to evening, when an eerie new sound abruptly intruded upon his senses. It felt so foreign to his water-logged island habitat that Jack nearly bolted upright in shock, heart thudding wildly.

Had he just heard a dog's howl?

"Not very probable," he chided himself, settling back into the soggy pillow of his folded coat only to discover that he had awakened to an unforgiving stiff and aching body. "What sorta man's so heartless as to be leaving a dog on an island?" He wondered, irritably flexing the toes inside his left boot to bring feeling back into those extremities.

Yet, even as Jack became half-convinced that it had been an unkind trick of his fuzzy mind, the insidious wind once more carried along a distant plaintive howling cry to the pirate's disbelieving ears.

Continued:

**Chapter 3 - That Makes Me Island Governor. **


	3. That Makes Me Governor

**WHICH WAY LIES TRUE**

AN: Thank you to those wanting more of Jack's island misadventures! Yes, he's getting closer to finding the cove - and his freedom. But things will get crazier for the pirate in the next couple of chapters as he develops _unusual_ survival skills. In this one his desire for fire goes awry and in the next, he finds a novel way to keep a pesky bird from stealing his fish! 

Summary: Cold, wet and starving, Jack is making the best of island life, but he's not a fisherman -- and what does he know about fires?

**Part 3 – That Makes Me Island Governor **

"Didn't hear a dog, didn't hear a dog," Jack chanted in a frenzy. "No dog, eh? Then what do you suppose howls like that? An ailin' goat, p'rhaps? No, that particular howl always has _teeth_, mate, nastily sharp, bite-y of the kind what's _not_ used to crop the fields with, trust me. And you know about _that _kind of teeth, do you not?"

Jack shivered against the chill of his open, unprotected shelter, trying desperately to keep his thoughts rational, far away from the horrific images of Jones' deceased beastie and still not dwell upon what his craving for food might compel him to do. He had no desire to wander around this strange place without a decent weapon. Yet scampering, gleeful self-images casting rope nets into the surf and digging in the shallow sand for crabs plagued his attempts to rest. Predictably, when he lobbed shells at their tauntingly satisfied faces in disgust, they shimmered like desert mirages, leaving only the eerie echo of his name in the early evening breeze.

"Jaaacccckkk, lyin' there in the cold s not gonna fill your belly, dear boy."

"As helpfully obvious in purpose as usual," he moaned, covering his ears. "Go back to the bakin' hell what you lot came from, please, and leave me to suffer in this one alone, can you not?"

An unsettling silence prevailed; wind pushed through bending palms and a shrouded sun peered over the silver water, throwing dull gray, waving shadows along Jack's roof. Yet as soon as he spotted the pile of driftwood, he forgot about the dog and other selves. Driftwood meant fire, fire meant warmth. He just needed to go out and gather said wood and bring it inside to dry out.

Easy. It's not as if he could sleep now, anyway.

The dog, he figured to be a good few miles off, maybe closer to the cove that he'd noticed as he'd approached the island – if he was to be a fair judge of distance. From where he lie huddled in the bowed corner of the tilted dinghy, only half of the beach remained in his sight past the tree's crooked trunk.

_"Jack, do you suppose that wood in our bonfire came from ships wrecked by storms?" _

_"Aye, but you've not lived, 'Lizbeth, til you've been out there and fought a fierce storm in the ocean." _

"Dinghys don't really count," he whispered, tapping the damp wood wall, "'cept for maybe exacerbatin' one's already sorry sense of ironic dignity. Good one that, Hector." He idly wondered what Barbossa would think if he knew Jack had lost his map at sea. "And how truly poetic is that," he laughed ruefully against an arid throat. "Now, _no one _gets to be immortal, with the exception, of course, of dear, heart-bereft William."

_"You, as it has not surprisingly turned out, are everything I once despised about pirates, Jack."_

_"Ah, but can you honestly say, William, that I ever mutinied against a man what I perceived as a... friend?"_

_"We were never friends, Jack, only tools of deceitful convenience for the other. Even now, when she has confessed her guilt and remorse, can you be honest enough with me to admit that you want Elizabeth?"_

_"Deceitful convenience? Oh, I like that. And as to your conceivably maligned lady fair, you've no worry there, mate. I promise you, what with the honest treachery and soul forfeiture to the likes of a great beastie, she's no claim on me nor I on her."_

_"So tell me, Jaaack, as I'm curious ta know, what did it take for ye to turn such an upstandin' lass like your Miss Swann inta one of our like?"_

_"You tell me, Hector. Were you not the rather heartless one what marooned said lass, as well as me, with but one pistol and a cache full of rum between us for survivin'?"_

_"Funny, as I don't recall there bein' any rum, Jack."_

"_Will, please… stab the heart! I'm not sorry, Jack. So, it's Mrs. Turner now, is it?"_

"Whoa…wha…?" Jack snapped his eyes wide, odd dreams of honesty, hearts and warm fires lingered. The heart and desire for a fire he thought he understood, but the honesty thing baffled him.

Had he not been honest with Will about wanting immortality and taking the heart?

"_Ahh, could eet be that cleever Jack Sparrow doan know what 'e wants?"_

Take it all and give nothing back.

But he _had_ given back the contended heart to a dying man. And the warming gratitude of hope alight in Elizabeth's eyes, as his broken sword in Turner's failing grip had pierced the living vessel, had briefly flared in his jaded soul to rival any bonfire on a deserted beach.

"_Once was quite enough, thank you."_

Quelling a mad urge to slam his head into the wall, Jack shifted in his corner, cautiously stretching and surprised that the coat felt almost dry under his head. Looking up, he saw, with puzzled trepidation, a notable lack of sky. Was it his imagination or had his roof _grown_ a few inches in the last hours? He could no longer see the twisting lower palm leaves swat at the lopsided mast pole.

Great, the bloody sneaky boat must have shifted sometime during the morning while he slept. He supposed he should go out and see if the keel was still safely imbedded in the wet sand. It wouldn't do to lose his only means of shelter in this horribly miserable weather.

"Fish," he remarked, when his feet failed to move at his urging. "Beached fish cook up nicely on a bonfire - made, no doubt, of driftwood, ey?"

Driftwood. Bonfire. Cooked fish.

At length, it took Jack's empty stomach prodding him out to where his shivering legs refused to go. He shuddered at the idea of leaving, pausing to strip off his dry weskit, and then he crawled outside into the cold downpour. His thin white shirt was soaked and clinging to skin before he got to the keel. It was hard to see much of anything through a gray, watery blur, but it looked as if the sand _had_ released its grip, leaving the half-destroyed L-shaped mast tilting lower. But both, however, _seemed_ to be staying in place despite the punishing winds.

As for beached fish, none lie invitingly in his sight.

Disappointed, but not yet defeated, Jack's attention swerved to the pile of driftwood where he sought out a sharp stick. "How hard can it be to spear a bloody fish," he grumbled, dropping to his haunches to sort among the pieces of wood. His sore hip protested, but he ignored it. Unfortunately, none of the bulky or blunt-ended rough wood met his requirements for spearfishing; many of them apparently long dead tree branches. Briefly, he entertained whittling down a piece with his sword, but abandon the idea as too much hard work.

"Face it, mate," he admonished himself, "you've no more skill in carvin' than you do in spear-fishin'. Rather sad survival skills, so it would seem, for a man what's been marooned on an island _three_ bloody times." Groaning at his own misfortune, he hefted four good-sized logs into his arms and headed back to his shelter. "This arguably bein' the worst."

_"You laid on a beach for three days and drank rum?"_

"Look, it's not like I _asked_ to be made governor of an island, did I?" he muttered dropping one of the pieces of wood that barely missed crushing his right foot. "Hmm, Governor Jack Sparrow..." He mulled over the sound of it, ignoring the fugitive log as it rolled down the beach into the foaming surf behind with a noisily defiant splash. "Alas, no piratey ring to it, what I can see," he determined and knelt to unceremoniously release his heavy burden at the edge of the half-sheltering boat. All three large logs tumbled into the bow; wood striking hard against wood with a grating clunk, clunk, clunk and the dinghy wall trembled in swaying protest.

Jack winced at the thunderous noise. Oh, bugger. Not good.

Worse, at the instant the logs smashed into the boat, Jack turned to see the evil palm lurch free of the mast tip, and then whip back from the brutal force of the wind.

That was all it took.

The fragile masthead splintered with a brittle CRACK from the impact, reverberating through the boat. The dinghy teetered, and a horror-stricken Jack reeled back seconds before the shattered pole launched into the air and dropped like a demented spear trailing severed ropes to impale the sail into the ground close enough to snag the pirate's boots in its attached lines.

Jack lay in the wet sand, oblivious to the rain, staring up open-mouthed. "Bloody thing's _possessed!!_" he croaked, too stunned to think clearly. As if in retaliation, the boat gave a final heave and capsized, stopped short from impaling the pirate by the tent pole-like mast sticking out of the ground. Although Jack's breeches were too wet to be sure, he suspected that if there _had_ been anything in his bladder, it would have given out _that_ time.

"Tomorrow you'll be naught but kindling for this," Jack threatened, hastily rising to untangle himself and scurry inside to avoid another assault "Kindling, " he promised darkly.

Jack had no idea how long it took him to rig a crude tent pole, creating an uneven X-shape between the splintered mast and sheared spar jutting from the ground. He used the rope sparingly, finding that his own broken sword made a decent knife. When he finished, however, he realized that the sky seemed a darker gray than before, and a watery yellow sun, poking between thick clouds, hovered very close to the horizon.

Another night approached and he still had no bonfire - or anything to cook on it.

His stomach cramped from hunger and the cold dampness felt like it had penetrated to his bones. He was about ready to set the little boat alight for heat, but then he recalled that he had forgotten to dry out the pistol's powder.

Another weary foray along the surf failed to yield beached fish, however, Jack did uncover a lone coconut near a soaring palm. In near delirium, he devoted the last hours of light to hacking and stabbing the rock-hard shell with his knife. When it cracked, he smacked it against the trunk and broke it open. He couldn't cut out and eat the milk-soaked slices fast enough.

With his belly momentarily happy, Jack pulled out his pistol and spread the powder to dry on what was left of the sail. He had finished wiping off the silver-gilded stock when he heard the dog again. And this time it sounded nearer than before.

Very carefully setting his pistol down, he rose and edged from beneath his modest shelter to check the beachside. With the storm passed, the heavy clouds had dispersed enough to allow a full moon to break through, the towering palms casting undulating blue shadows across the water -- a sight a little too reminiscent of his last night in Port Royal for his liking, causing a cold chill to creep across his spine. Then something promising caught his attention where the tide pooled by a cluster of smooth rocks.

"Oh, what's that then?"

A dark, familiarly rounded shape floated placidly between two half-submerged boulders. His hat!! Jack couldn't recall when or how he'd lost it, but it was back! Oddly enough, it _always_ found its way back to the pirate. He splashed into knee-deep water and joyously snagged his tricorn, flipping over a baby sea turtle. "Ooh! Sorry, mate!" The pirate cocked a skeptical eye at the tiny creature. "Oi, you didn't---?" He shook off the thought. "Not very probable."

Jack plopped the hat atop his head, not caring that it dripped water on his nose and down his neck, only that it belonged there. "I'm guessin' this makes me island governor – properly," he declared, once again forgetting that he might not be alone in his self-proclaimed domain.

Kneeling over the woodpile with little more than moonlight to guide his cramped and raw fingers, Jack diligently worked to get a spark going, but the sand was too damp and every success fizzled in a wet hiss. As a last desperate resort, he tore off a corner of his dry sash and wrapped it around the small bundle of wood, blowing gently on it. Minutes later, the cloth caught and a tiny, weak yellow flame ate the material, briefly becoming a smoky wisp before it hit and ignited the black remains of powder with an exploding, crackling snap, snap, snap.

"Yes, my fire!!" He whooped, jumping to his feet in excitement, accidentally kicking two burning logs free of the pile with the tip of his boot. "Hot! Toasty! Heat!"

Yes, at last, Jack had his much-sought toasty bonfire!

The two dislodged logs bumped quickly toward the dinghy and struck a third piece of wood next to the mast, catching it on fire and threatening to incinerate his newly-built tent pole -- along with the attached dinghy and its neighboring palm tree.

Now he had to get control of said bonfire before his domain turned into a toasty, but charred ruin!

TBC:

Part 4 – No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish 


	4. No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish 1

**WHICH WAY LIES TRUE**

AN: Thank you so very, very much for the wonderful praise!! Most of this trilogy was mentally mapped out at the same time IN ABSENTIA was written, but then only as back-story for my own edification. In other words, I wasn't sure that it was worth pursuing, but the urge to explore Jack's version and what led to the unselfish decision he made later was too tempting not to. This chapter, however, is a long one and is divided into two parts.

Summary: Jack is still coping with island life despite setbacks, but he's about to make a discovery that could lead to his escape.

**Part 4a – No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish**

"Uh, oh, BIG fire," Jack wailed, hopping across the sand to save the endangered dinghy. "No, no, no!!" He snatched up the oar and beat at the furiously burning driftwood, knocking the fiery logs away from his modest dwelling and back out into the sand.

Unfortunately, his weapon was also made of wood and heated tongues licked at the edges of Jack's sash as it blackened the doomed oar. Frantically tearing the cloth free at his waist with one hand, he fled across the empty beach with an ear-shattering war cry that sounded oddly like, "CLEEEAAAAARRR THHHHHHE DECCCKKKK!"

If anyone had been on the island to see the absurd and bizarre sight of a half-dressed pirate racing wildly toward the water, waving a burning oar over his head like a huge torch, they would have thought _twice_ about staying - or at least drinking the water.

A few feet short of the receding tide, Jack abruptly yanked himself to a halt, nearly toppling headfirst into the sand. His hat would have kept on going had he not grabbed at it in the last minute. He turned his head to the right and peered owlishly up at the burning stump that once had been a paddle. "Bloody hell, it's just an _oar_, mate."

Seconds before he dropped it, Jack heard a sharp crackle from the direction of the capsized dinghy. "Didn't like the sound of that…" He whipped around to see that his bonfire had died to red embers, its weak glow barely enough to see the dinghy where smoldering wood nestled up against the broken mast. As he stared, the half-burnt log sparked once; twice and then a fiery ribbon of bright orange shot through blackened wood and jumped to the lower mast, instantly consuming the ripped sail – with its residue of gunpowder.

"Now what kind of bonfire does that?" He wondered, glancing longingly back at an entire oceanful of water.

Not a useful pail to be found, not even a hollow shell. Then he remembered the split coconut and flew back across the beach.

Unchecked, the disastrous fire tried to climb up to the dinghy roof. The boat's damp timber had so far thwarted it - or at least made its destructive progress slower as Jack arrived out of breath. In a frenzy, he sought the ground for the hiding halves of the coconut shell, but ended up desperately chucking handfuls of damp sand at the growing flames. An uncaring wind from the sea, however, caught it and not too delicately tossed it back into Jack's face, tiny crabs and all. Spluttering in disgust, spitting out grit and slapping at the miniature creatures skittering down his forearm, Jack was about ready to let the damn thing burn!

"So what happened to the map, Jack?" he mocked himself, absently flicking off a crab trying to cling to his tattered sleeve. "Gone, alas. Lost at sea. Stolen by a storm. A truly _bad _storm, I should mention, and naught could I do but find myself shelter." He stomped to the other side with his back against the wind. "And the dinghy?" He scooped up another fistful and grimaced. "Nothin' happened to it, really. Hit itself a tree, is all. Or rather hit_ by _a tree." He paused to think about that, and nodded. "Yep, hit by a _vile_ tree, it was. And worse, mate, when I went about makin' a _most_ huge fire – as would any civilized personage - the bloody evil thing BURNED!!" He fitfully heaved the sand at the dinghy's smoking keel. "Just like the rum," he lamented, not wanting to visit that memory again.

In the midst of calamity, however, he still had to chuckle, imagining Gibbs' creative re-telling of how a great, aggressive palm tree had destroyed Jack Sparrow's helpless boat. No doubt, said tree would considerably grow in size and take on long menacing arms of twisted vines to do the deed.

He threw more sand at the roof fire and managed a weakly victorious smile as smaller flames were doused in a hissing sizzle. Another few half-hearted pitches and the dribbling dirt smothered the last fires, sending thin swirls of smoke into the overhanging palm leaves. Jack silently watched it rise into the darkness above, feeling little sense of triumph in his heart. Yes, part of him actually _did_ want the boat turned to ash for all the grief and injury it had caused one pirate. Honestly, there was no hope of salvaging it. Between the winds, tree and finally fire, it had all but been annihilated as a specimen of seaworthiness. He didn't have to see what was left of the fire-damaged mast to know that it would never fly a sail again. Even Barbossa could not have envisioned this fate for the parting joke on his long-time nemesis.

Jack sighed, grabbed a final handful of sand and tossed it up at the dispersing smoke. "So goes the unlamented _Barbossa's Folly_," he declared in a glum half-eulogy, half-christening tribute. "May your sadly blighted timbers fare no better than the wretched namesake what cursed me with you." He clasped his palms together, affected a slight bow and turned his attention toward the dark, silver-glinted ocean to his right, lulled by the quiet, steady wash of swells over rock and pale sand. "Meanin' no slight, love," he whispered almost reverently, "but I'd truly be grateful could you look out for my _Pearl_. And if you be in a fair mind for tradin', you can have the wreck -- the _Folly's_ 'bout scuttled anyway - for the map what you, uh," he minced, gold teeth shone by moonlight, "you, uhh, _borrowed_? 'Sides, wouldn't hardly be the first time me bed was naught but ground, 'ey?"

He waited a few seconds in anticipation, and then stepped closer to the shore. With a frothing slap at the beach's edge, the surf pulled back into the receding water, leaving in its wake one nearly submerged squat bottle, bright moon light winking off glass.

"A joke, a _very_ bad joke, that." Jack shook his head in exasperated disbelief, rolling his eyes. "Or is it that you want me to burn that _too_?" he complained, tramping across the sand, fighting an unwanted memory of sunshine, blue seas and wind-streaked silk-gold hair. No! The bane of his sanity had turned a pleasing blaze into a funeral pyre for his beloved drink. And yet a familiar drinking song began to seep into his mind as he glared hopelessly at the bottle.

_I was just a child, Jack, crossing the ocean from England, when the sailors taught me that song, before I knew the true evils of drink..._

"NO!" Jack shrieked in sudden outrage, snatching up the bottle. "You've no pity, woman! Bloody take it and leave me be!!"

He was about to toss it back into the water to banish her echo, when he abruptly realized that it wasn't _his _bottle nor was it empty. "What the bloody hell..." In his astonishment, he let the bottle slip from slack fingers and it rolled with a sloshing noise across wet sand. Jack stared it as if fearing it had been hexed as he took a few wary steps backward, his dark eyes wide in trepidation. He waited until it stopped, then he rushed back to the dinghy, grabbed the remaining oar and went to poke at the intruder as though it were alive. You honestly never knew what sort of ugly denizens the ocean might cast from her depths when she had a mind to, although he suspected that he'd _already_ seen her worst in Jones' foul crew.

When satisfied that the bottle wouldn't explode into green slime or sprout horrific clawed teeth, Jack picked it up again. He studied the long neck with cautious interest and held its contents up to the moon's inspection. Not dark enough for rum, he thought, seeing a filmy, blurred gold orb through a half bottle of thin amber liquid. "Now that _is_ quite curious," he admitted, giving the bottle an experimental shake. Nothing changed inside. "From where has this come?" Jack frowned, hesitated for a minute and then fingered the odd-looking cap. "Am I really expected to _drink_ this, I wonder?"

Only the distant sound of a night bird's cry answered him. Jack quickly looked back toward the unseen hillside where the noise had come from, not for first time wondering what could live up there. And if anything did, could he count on them _staying _up there until he could find a way off the island?

"What's this, then? You abstainin' from drink, mate?" One of his self-images stood confidently on the dighy's singed keel, with a light-footed balance that the pirate could only envy. "Or is it that you're just wantin' good company to enjoy it with."

Jack groaned. "Look, Captain Figment, even if I was to figure out this stuff is worthy of me palate, my idea of good company to not abstain with is naught an affair of yours, so get down off the bloody boat 'fore you break my neck!"

"Oh, aye, captain!" The mocking image jumped up, performed an impressive somersault and disappeared into the night air before his boots could touch the sandy ground.

"Bloody coward," Jack grumbled. "I shall take my fill of drink only when I wish to do so."

He turned in the direction of his nearly forgotten bonfire, glowing too faintly between charred logs. He supposed that all the wildly flying sand hadn't done much to help keep it alive. A cooler breeze off the sea advised him to try and revive it before the night chill settled into his open domain. Leaving the strange bottle next to the ruined dinghy, Jack retrieved the oar and stabbed it into dark red embers, awakening dull sparks amid dried ash. When the oar started steaming, however, he had to quit. But by then, he'd built up a modest fire. True, it was nothing like the roaring beauty of before when all the trouble had started, but he judged it was enough to hold most of the night's cold at bay if he stayed close enough.

Inside the dinghy, everything smelt strongly of stale, burnt wood. Even his coat and weskit, safely tucked up inside, had a smoky odor to them, but he didn't care as long as they were servicable in keeping him warm.

He hadn't intended to fall asleep as fast as he did, but it must have been a restful enough night because his first conscious thought with approaching daylight was why are the birds so bloody loud!

TBC:

**Part 4b – No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish**

FYI: Any reference to Tom Hank's _Castaway_ is unintentional. Never saw it. As the middle of a trilogy, this is only a playful 'if it can go wrong, it will' reflective, but memorable interlude before he's reunited with Lizzie.


	5. No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish 2

AN: Apologies to those awaiting updates, but I took a breather for a Lizzie tease-twister, a trio of romantic first-person vignettes, a semi-parody, _and_ my very first Jack POV, each of which are listed on my profile, and all but two are posted.

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Summary: Jack, by way of a mean-tempered fowl, is very close to a discovery that could lead to his island escape.

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**WHICH WAY LIES TRUE**

**Part 4b – No Perfidious Fowl Gets My Fish**

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"Wait, birds?" Jack rolled over, squinting at the odd sight of four large hopping gray objects with long pointy beaks, out flung wings and webbed feet screaming and pecking at each other to get at something lying by the rock-bordered inlet pool. "And what, I ask, are those things? No birds I ever saw!"

He blinked several times before forcing himself to sit up for a better look at this latest apparition. While he tried to determine what species it might be, a fifth intrusion upon his otherwise quiet morning glided in from the east shoreline. This one, however, spread out wide silver-gray wings and haughtily demanded attention by the rest of the bickering flock. Jack had never witnessed a bird strut like royalty before, but that's what number 5, apparently their leader, did as the other feathered creatures fell back in a raucous twitter and grudgingly made way for him to pass.

Jack watched the spectacle for another few minutes until his belly made a rude noise for attention. "Oh, enough of this nonsense," the hungry pirate muttered, seizing the oar. "No fish, but fowl will do, as not."

The alarming sight of a menacing two-legged thing charging at them with a long, twirling wood appendage instantly sent the terrified flock stumbling and reeling high into the dawn sky. A few presumably called back a warning to number 5 whom seemed oblivious of impending danger. Unlike loyal subjects, however, none of them lingered long, whirling off together toward the distant cliffs in a crooked gray line.

Jack ignored his rout and stealthily skirted the large stones of the rock pool's basin to discover what had unwise Number 5's attention. The lone bird had perched himself atop a thickly tangled mound of seaweed wedged between two sand-bound boulders, long gray and white tail feathers vertical. At the sound of the pirate's boots crunching sand, his head popped out of the seaweed mass, a limp blue-green fish tail caught firmly in his long upturned beak.

"What's this?" Jack laughed, lowering the oar to his side. "You're no exotic bird of any sort, but a stupid poachin' duck and so you know, Your Nibs, that's _my _property what you got in your mouth, uhh, beak, savvy?"

In response, the duck lowered his head slightly, snapping out his wings in a sudden threatening gesture. Despite himself, Jack took a startled step backward, tripping over the oar clattering behind his boot. He'd heard somewhere that waterfowls had a mean streak even when not provoked and challenging this one for ownership of the beached fish would certainly not put them on friendly terms. His belly, however, honestly didn't care _how_ he got the fish, only that he did.

Regaining his balance, Jack bent to pick up the fallen oar, warily eyeing the annoyed duck, which in turn watched him as if awaiting an attack. For his part, the pirate felt rather foolish brandishing an oar as a weapon - though not for the first time, he reminded himself with a rueful grin, and it really was, sadly, all that he had left for protection with no decent sword and no gunpowder. Worse, his own belly would _never_ forgive him if he lost _this _fight to a greedy-minded duck.

This was to be the one tale Gibbs would not dare tell, Jack decided grimly, even if he had to threaten the old sailor on pain of death.

Unexpectedly, the duck let go of his catch, hopped off the bundled seaweed, and for only a minute, Jack thought he might graciously quit and go hunt food elsewhere. But, no, he had simply changed tactic in the wake of competition, the pirate realized, when the determined fowl clamped onto a string of loose seaweed and attempted to drag the whole package back down into the pool. Jack stood there, half-stunned as part of the seaweed net tore apart and spilled out two well-entwined fish tails.

"No, I think not," he declared indignantly, rousing himself to slam the oar's pole into the ripped edge of the crude seaweed net. "No perfidious fowl gets my fish!"

The duck ignored him, obstinately yanking at an unmoving seaweed string, until it dawned on him that there was a solid obstacle impeding his efforts, and the towering intruder was to blame. If Number 5 had had a back-up plan, like pecking a nasty hole in Jack's nearest boot to distract the pirate, he forgot it.

Or rather _something_ else caused him to forget it.

His Nibs looked more agitated as if he instinctively sensed another danger of which Jack could not. With an irate squawk, the temperate fowl furiously shook his gray and white feathers, and in a screeching flurry launched skyward in retreat. But unlike his followers, he set down again on a high overhang, his outraged cry promising later mayhem for the unfair loss of his meal.

Jack could only shake his head at the audacity of the creature. Shrugging at his dubious victory, he turned to gather up the bundle of seaweed-wrapped fish, but as he set down his oar, the unmistakable noise of pebbles trickling down rocks nearby alerted him to what _might_ have spooked Number 5.

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TBC:

**Part 5 – To The Victor Go The Feathers**

AN: Anyone ever chased by an excitable fowl can well relate to Jack's predicament here. Imagine trying to _take_ a fish from one? Yep, that'll leave a mark or two on you!


	6. To The Victor Go The Feathers

AN: See Monthly Update note on my profile, I'm back to take a break from the unrelated MISPLACED HEARTS. How long, I suppose, will depend on the reviews.

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Summary: Jack considers a quick route to the cove, but something unexpected changes his plans.

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**Part 5 – To The Victor Go The Feathers**

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Whatever had spooked Number 5, Jack wasn't certain he wanted to meet with it, yet he'd already snatched up the oar and moved towards the rock face as that thought took firmer root in his brain.

Unable to stop himself, he looked serreptuously up at the rock cliffs to see if any of his self-images might deign to make a helpful reappearance when needed – like now.

Nothing materialized on the overhead rocks.

Apparently, that's not how they worked, he concluded glumly, and hefted the oar up in front of his chest with faint resolve to continue on ahead.

The massive jumble of rocks bordering the far eastern edge of the beach broke only in the spot where the inlet pool stood. Behind the shallow pool, on the opposite side, they rose gradually into a craggy, boulder-strewn cliff like a crude, lopsided staircase for giants, but not negotiable for mere humans. The rounded rock wall facing the ocean, however, seemed almost vertical with a slight inclining curvature where it appeared to circle into a deep recess, scraggly bushes and overhung vines half-concealing its sharp inward turn.

From where Jack stood on the beach close to the water, he could see where mounds of monstrous rocks shot straight up out of the ocean at the base of the cliff. Above them, where the stone curved toward the distant plateau, a narrow opening, like a jagged crease, had been carved along the rock face forming a narrow lip where it overlooked the frothing water. From what he could see, it wasn't a long drop, but those rocks at the bottom would pretty much kill anyone who fell onto them. The crease's hollow opening began a little above the tallest boulder and climbed crookedly up into the wall's abrupt inward turn. In fact, from the ground, it looked to the pirate as if that was where the cliff ended - except that he knew the cove was on the other side, just not how far.

His momentum completely lost by the idea of that hazardous trek, Jack lowered the oar and took a few step backwards. "Up riggin's one thing," he muttered, "there's the lines for holdin'... This... it's much more suited for that monkey than me... I_ need _rope, yes, and..._ lots _of it, I'm sure."

It hadn't yet occurred to Jack that there was nothing up there but thin vines and tiny bushes to tie or hold a rope on the cliff wall, but he found the thought of it comforting in his own odd way. Or maybe it was the cheery thought that nothing could _possibly_ come from the other direction for that very same reason.

That cheery and comforting feeling lasted less than a minute as Jack's eyes fell upon an uprooted bush in the rocks to his right. The little plant had apparently dropped from a fair height as most of its twisted branches had wedged rather deep between the boulders, only a few leaves and a tangle of spindly, dirt-encrusted roots visible. Reluctantly, he went over and pulled the entrenched bush free, a havoc of suspicions running through his brain. As a man of the sea, he didn't know all that much about plants, but even he could recognize torn roots when he saw them.

Bugger.

Once again laying the oar on the ground, Jack grimly contemplated the ledge and what to use for rope. His flimsy sash was out, but what about the braiding of seaweed?

The uninspired idea struck him as funny as he tossed the plant aside and pulled one of his plaited locks around to examine it critically. If he knew how to braid anything of a proper manner, would his hair look as it did?

Recalling the seaweed, he went back to the pool, rewrapped the fish and placed two large boulders on them to keep carnivorous sorts from taking them.

"Cats love fish, don't they?" he mused, viewing his rushed handiwork. "Fish and rats, as well, or so says that odd one-eyed stick I've never invited to crew aboard _my _ship."

He thought briefly of Ragetti's claim that his ship, like every other, had rats. Before Jack could argue with conviction, he supposed that remark explained the purring bundle of gray fur peeking out of the one-eyed man's worn coat as they left Shipwreck Cove.

All right, the little cat stayed to address the questionable rat issue.

Dogs? They were a different matter. He wasn't too sure what they made a meal of.

"Fowls, probably, what with feathers and all."

"To the victor go the feathers."

Jack rolled his eyes, knowing by now what he would see before he turned around. "Have you nothing better to do than bother me when I'm… rather busy?" he complained.

"Tryin' to help you out here, mate." His self sat contented, ankles leisurely crossed, upon a boulder a short distance up. This self wore the open blue weskit, but no weapons. "You really need to get off this beach, you know."

Jack stopped, set his teeth in annoyance, and turned to face himself absorbed in studying a small burn hole in his tattered right sleeve. "Is that not what I'm doin' now? And how many of you, me… how many are you, anyway?"

The apparition held up two lazy fingers. "The shoulder-perching thing got a bit unpractical, but the principal is still sound enough, I think."

"Think what you like," Jack huffed, kicking the net with the toe of his boot a little too hard. "Kindly do it elsewhere, if you don't mind - preferably on another island. I've a good climb to be makin' and I need my wits, such as they are, about me, savvy?"

A reverberating thunder shook the ground, startling the apparition and nearly tossing Jack sideway into the trembling tide pool. Rocks rumbled off the cliff side to crash into the ocean; palm trees shuddered, shaking free coconuts and sending small, colorful birds into abrupt flight. Stunned, Jack pushed himself to his feet.

Guns, _big _guns and from a ship not far off shore. He scrambled to the edge of the beach and scanned the placid water and flat horizon.

No sails in sight. Yet Jack knew well enough the report of a ship firing her main guns – and that had been it.

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TBC:

**Part 6 – Not A Good Day For A Swim**


	7. Not A Good Day For A Swim

AN: Please see Monthly Update on my profile page.

Summary: Jack sees a possible rescue from a passing ship and makes some useful discoveries.

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**Part 6 – Not A Good Day For A Swim**

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The wind from the east carried a faintly distant frenzy of voices – like a bawdy pirate crew in the throes of ransacking victory or else drunken celebration.

"And me, without so much as a white flag for wavin'," he grumbled, feeling oddly left out of whatever unseen triumph he could not be a part of. "Drink up me, 'earties, yo, ho."

He could always swim out to the sandbar and –

Oh.

All thoughts of going into the water were instantly squelched when Jack saw the gray sail-shaped dorsal fin gliding between him and the only other tiny piece of land in sight. True, he didn't know that much about land animals, but he knew better than to believe it was just a dolphin out there.

"Not a good day for a swim, so it would seem."

Once again, Jack considered the rock climb. If a dog could make it, how hard would it be for a human? Besides, he had to know now if he was in danger of being blown to bits - by accidental happenstance. That'd be the most embarrassing, humiliating and unfortunate way to meet his demise. Second only to being shot by his own pistol – by himself.

Jack shuddered, realizing that that fear had been with him since Barbossa had marooned him all those years ago. And the last time back on the rumrunner's isle, it had been no different, but for his impotent ire against a witless blacksmith whom he would have happily shot instead, had he had the chance to.

Of course, by Lizzie's fifth or six monotonous and entirely pointless 'we have to save Will' chant, he was all but ready to take Barbossa up on _his_ cold suggestion. In his dark mood, the drinking --and the song -- was probably what saved her from being murdered by one very exasperated pirate.

But then, naturally, that bloody Norrington would have murdered _him _wellbefore Jack felt the hangman's noose in Port Royal.

Shaking off further speculation, Jack grappled his way up through the rocks and climbed onto the stone trail. The vegetation was sturdier than it appeared, as was the path, wide enough for a decent-sized four-limbed animal if he thought there was food here – which, if you discounted His Nibs and his cronies, there was very little of.

The climb was trickier than ascending the ship's ratlines but he managed it with only a few scrapes on his arms and neck. A tussle with a vicious, thorny bush, a few tumbling rocks with a misstep too near the edge, but he made it to the flat rock from where His Nibs had declared his indignation.

The view from this height was spectacular, and for the first time, Jack could actually appreciate that this was not just another 'spit' of land. The white beach below curved liked a crescent moon cradled on each side by thick, vertical rock arms rising straight from the sea. And although the western wall of the island looked a little less formidable, he could see where it sloped and rose at the receding tree line upward to become the lower half of the towering northern rock wall. A hazy, jagged line of faded purple behind the northern face hinted of a mountainous region far beyond it.

Was it possible that it wasn't an island after all, but an actual coastline?

Wishing that he had his spyglass, Jack turned back toward the ocean to scan the wide horizon for a ship.

Nothing. A flutter of crying seagulls circling near the rocks for fish, and what might have been a white pelican swooping in low with gullet open between them.

No sounds on the wind now, but for the birds and the pounding rush of the surf against the rocks below.

Wait. On the left. A vague whitish patch sliding between the waves below, her top sails barely brushing the yellow-tinted horizon. A sloop, low in the water and tacking northeast away from him. And, yes, the faintest strains of a fiddle reached straining ears, and Jack, to his amazement, thought he recognized the jaunty tune from another lifetime.

_O captain, please captain, keep the drink from me,_

_Tis vile and wicked, and will take my love of sweet Marie,_

_O captain, please captain, tell the wench I'm at sea,_

_I'm deep in me drinks and she must let me be._

The memory of the remaining verse echoed in his head while he grimly watched the tiny sails grow too small to follow with his eyes, even as he squinted at the sun's white glare off the water.

Frustrated, disappointed and too stubborn to move away, Jack lingered to stare at the empty ocean until there was nothing to see anymore but a silent, undulating blue to mock his longing for freedom.

…_.tell the wench I'm at sea._

"Ah, if only it were to be true," he lamented, feeling the day's oppressive heat through his thin shirt, despite a strong wind trying to blind him with his swirling hair. Swiping the plaited locks aside impatiently, Jack peered up at the set of large rocks to his left. From the beach, they'd looked like the highest point on the island, now he knew better.

Taking a rest about halfway up, Jack found himself balancing at the lip of a deep, craggy ravine; not as far down as the one where he'd tried to escape from the natives, but still a deadly drop into a stone-toothed valley. On its opposite side stood a flat, narrow plateau and, he suspected, also the border of the cove he'd been seeking. Unfortunately, even if he'd had any rope the distance was too wide for anyone to swing across.

Struggling against an increasing sense of defeat, Jack hauled himself the rest of the way to the grassy summit, if for no other reason then to survey his rather impressive domain from a 'crow's nest' perspective.

To the right, his beach had shrunk again, the capsized dinghy no larger than a scalloped black seashell wedged below a bent, finger-sized palm. The trees behind it were dense but for a few places where jumbled stone formations left large open areas, most of the palms and vines stopping short of the enormous northern rock wall. From what he could tell, the high wall embraced this half of the island, but for a crooked gouge near to the pool not quite large enough to fit a galleon through.

If there was life or otherwise beyond that thick rock wall, this was the route by which they could get through to the beach – and him. The semi-level top of the wall itself stretched behind him like a wide plateau, broken by scattered boulders, and some distance away beyond the bush-crowned rise, the unmistakable cascading roar of a waterfall.

Nature's stone-formed fortress, and he stood on the rough-hewn battlements ready to defend it with – with _what_? A broken sword?

Off to the left toward the sea cliffs, Jack's goal remained out of his reach. Due to the cavernous chasm, he couldn't get a good view over the rim, seeing mostly the upper half of another wall green with sparse vegetation and now a decidedly unnatural dark wavering spire – with sagging lines attached.

The narrowed tip of a mast – the topgallant.

A ship. Wrecked or damaged? Salvageable or a taunting reminder of what he'd lost?

Jack had started to turn away when he caught a black blur down on the side of the chasm; something small and elusive. Was it possible?

He stepped closer to the edge, narrowed his eyes, and for a long, anxious moment hoped to see nothing along the grayish-brown, pocked canyon wall. And then there it was: the dark spot, no bigger than his horizontal thumb -- and it had a long tail. The animal moved against the southern seawall to his right below a narrow overhang – and disappeared.

Jack blinked in disbelief, crooked forefingers pressing into both sides of his temple over the bandana. "That's not _really_ possible," he breathed, waiting to see if the creature might reappear, yet already knowing that it wouldn't. "It's a bloody trick of me eyes, is what."

Worse, the south wall stood adjacent to the cliff he'd come up, and apparently lead back to the beach - and his unprotected fish.

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TBC:

**Part 7 – Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs**


	8. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs1

AN: Yep, it's another two-parter, the trouble with rough drafts being that they blow themselves out of their own proportions. Well, mine do, anyway.

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Summary: Jack won his first bout with Number 5, but this obstinate fowl won't stay away long where there is a free meal to be had – especially if he had it _first_.

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**Part 7a ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs**

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His fish could be in danger.

Jack felt slightly panicked by that thought. So what was the quickest way back down?

"That would be jumpin'," he informed himself dubiously with no unnecessary nudging from his other less than helpful selves. "Alas, Port Royal dive's no good. I've bloody well got to get past _them"_, he groaned.

Two others had joined the one shark, lingering close to the sandbar, and Jack still couldn't see what their prey was, he just didn't want it to be him.

Returning the way he'd come up was certainly not an option; it was steep with too much hindrance from nasty little bushes and tree roots.

As he backed from the ledge, his eyes upon the water, Jack mentally sketched a map of this half of the island from what he'd seen to determine a better way down. But the further he got from the rocky summit, the more intrusive trees and plants sprouted into his path to confuse his bearings. By the time he was nearly deafened by the unseen waterfall's roar, he could no longer find the direction of the eastern wall.

Bugger. Why hadn't he brought his compass?

_You should know your compass is hopelessly broken, Jack. It leads to nothing I want._

_Trust me, love, it leads to nothin' you think you don't want, and therefore you won't know that you want it when you think about not wantin' it, savvy?_

Jack smiled. It had made simple sense to him, but Miss Swann had just rolled her eyes in disgust and gone off to another part of his ship, no doubt wondering how pressganged William fared on the _Dutchman_ with fish-face-y Jones.

"Probably better than my pilfered fish if I don't find a way back down," he lamented. Turning on the heel of his right boot, Jack couldn't even find a decent tree that he could climb up into. They were all too young, too narrow, or too short. "Not a bloody decent mast in the lot," he complained, "if I was thinkin' I might be repairin' the boat - which is rather unlikely at this point." He pondered that thought for a minute longer. "Unless, of course, I should find one of those little oar-tailed things with long teeth what build damns and gnaw into wood." He grimaced. "No, wait, do they not like fish,_ too_?"

Jack passed the next stand of trees with more urgency. That black animal - the dog? - would be upon his beach likely sniffing at his covered catch by this time. But if that were true, how had he gotten out of the cavern?

A quick glance right at the scorchingly bright orb in an almost cloudless sharp blue sky, told him that he'd been on this great plateau for at least 1 or 2 hours, maybe longer. And unlike at sea, the sun's trajectory was far too broad for any sailor to plot his course upon.

Not seeing many options, Jack tried it, anyway.

"Ah! If my unconventional calculatin' is right, the way down should be..." He followed his wandering forefinger with hooded eyes, and then pointed left, warily searching the tall, wild grass as if in fear that it might dip beneath his feet at any second. "Should be approximately... nearly... almost…" Jack stopped short from colliding temple-first with an enormous palm tree to fix it with his most accusing glare. "_Here_," he muttered. In irritation, he glanced to the right to see a tangled curtain of vines. "Okay, maybe that," he started, grabbing one of the vines to push aside, "was not the right," he took a step forward, still holding onto the vine when his left boot meet empty air, "waaaAAAAAAAYYYYYEEEEEEE!!!"

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TBC:

**Part 7b ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs**

AN: Yes, you probably saw that cliffie coming, but it was so in line with Jack's luck that I couldn't stop it. Besides, he found the way down - or did he?


	9. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs2

AN: Thank you, Jennifer, for your tireless support! Your story – Jack's knowledge of Latin – is believable. I'm convinced that Johnny _intended _him as a well educated, albeit restless man who came to love the sea, and that's how I will always write him.

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**Part 7b – Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- It's A Bumpy World**

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Jack finds his lost daughter and amnesiac wife waiting - no, that's lazy…

Um, half dozen hyperactive fan girls are scantily sunning themselves on his beach and to their giggling awe – ouch, not on _my _monitor screen.

Hey, isn't that Mary Su- Sarah, so beautiful and talented that she found her missing man in the middle of a very, very big ocean by simply calculating the precise location of a teeny-tiny boat - the envy of every navigator - through estimated increased wind speed and direction using one manicured finger, and look, she still kept those pretty Paris-designed eggshell white 3-inch heels spotless. That's true talent, folks!

Okay, I'm done playing now.

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The next few moments of Jack's existence may have been described as one endless stomach-wrenching whirl of cliff-side green and a mid-morning blue blur. The man was capable of registering two superfluous things as he fell: he'd found the eastern wall, and the vines locked in his grip were going along with him.

That couldn't be good.

How did one bloody brace himself for a bone-shattering impact?

Yet, just as that thought took unwanted hold of a terror-numbed brain, his boots struck something thankfully, and absorbingly soft. Patch of damp moss? The rest of his wearied body crumpled unceremoniously onto the spongy surface without caring what it was.

"Not all that much of a drop," he judged, gratefully. "I'd be guessin' 9 feet at most, if not a little further. Survived worse that that."

But before Jack could spare time for re-orienting or avoid being pelted by the raining web of severed vines, gravity had to remind him that he was on a precariously steep hillside high above the beach.

A new horror set in as his feet began to slip off the slick, mucky stuff, the dragging weight of the rest of his body preparing to follow the steady avalanche of stones, damp dirt and rotting plant roots – all of which his protesting boots had kicked loose.

One nervous glance below at a winding, tree-dotted, plunging gauntlet over his frantically digging boots, and Jack almost forgot how to breathe. In desperation, he spun around to claw his fingers deep into the earth for hopeful purchase. Clumps of crushed grass came free in his trembling fists. He bitterly cursed himself for making the stupid climb in search of the cove.

Stubborn gravity tugged more insistently at his lower body and his leaden feet quit the fight to surrender to it.

"Noooooo," he gritted, his plea turning unsurprisingly into a helpless whine. The moist soil betrayed all efforts, and nothing would stop his downward slide on the near-vertical hillside, he realized. Although he grabbed for every bared tree root and protruding plant he could reach as he skidded down the sloping incline, he hated that he was right.

Unlike falling off a ridge, Jack's swerving, chaotic view between jittery boots warned him of perilous rocks, bushes and trees lunging into his path, barely allowing him to twist away from otherwise mean collisions. He couldn't catch his breath or blink for fear of smashing into a sneaky obstacle with very nasty, leg-shattering consequences.

Relief, however, was not the first sensation that went through the pirate's mind when he noticed all obstacles ahead abruptly absent from a haphazardly tilting horizon. Beyond a tiny group of palms to his approaching left lay -- _nothing_.

No, now there was something purplish bobbing in the distance to his far left, just peeking above a soaring forest of palms. And from this height and angle, Jack had an uneasy feeling that he was rushing toward the western arm bordering his beach – with the entire length of that beach spread between them.

Jack swallowed, doubting very much that this time he might be facing a trifling 9-foot drop onto anything resembling soft, mushy ground.

It was then that he spotted a _possible_ way from messily meeting the drop of doom. If his heart hadn't lodged in his throat right next to a queasy stomach, this vague spark of hope might warm it.

True, it was perilously close to said dropping point, but if he could just veer more to the right then there was a chance. And chance had fed him more times than a decent meal had ever done.

Chance - and years at a ship's wheel negotiating shoals, reefs, and rocky outcroppings. It must have taught his reflexes _something_ of trajectories and course plotting. Move too far, he feared, and he might roll into a frighteningly uncontrolled tumble to be pitched over to his probable death.

He tried shifting his spine and turning his hip a little.

Nearer to the edge, the hillside began to level off gradually and Jack could no longer see the western wall's round peaks, but there was still nothing that he could see obstructing his direct path to the end of the of eastern wall.

A looming stand of vines thinly tangled between a pair of trees seemed his only net. He edged onto his right side, dragging his left leg outward, moving it like a human rudder.

Owww!! That bloody rock would leave a nice mark on his knee bone! Ouch, so would the one that just bludgeoned his big toe.

Oh, bugger. It didn't take a schooled navigator to tell Jack that caution wasn't going to work for him. Time for the risking of it all, mate. Should he regret it later, he'd actually be one fairly sore, but happily _living_ man.

"Proper timing," he reminded himself apprehensively, inwardly hearing the echo of many years, "And trajectory is what will be the ending of it – or _me_."

The bumpy world was very close to dropping away beneath him when Jack threw all his mustered strength into a desperate, dizzying sideway roll. Up, down, distance and time jumbled into a sickening upheaval. He squeezed shut his eyes and braced for either the bone-splintering slam into an unyielding tree trunk or the belly-knotting sense of being weightless and airborne.

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TBC:

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**Part 7c ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

AN: Honestly, the 'Jack and waterfowl' rematch is on the horizon.


	10. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs3

AN: Another few chapters and probably back to _Misplaced Hearts, _wherein Jack & Lizzie have suffered a _whopper_ of a misunderstanding - to Jack's detriment. In the meantime, in _WWLT_, Jack is getting his share of lumps for being curious, but it's about to pay off unexpectedly.

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**Part 7c ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- On Parrot's Wings**

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Craaaack. Snap. Snap. Snap. Craaaack. Snap.

The impact of crashing through snapping vine branches felt like someone was trying to bind his body in a vise-like snarl of sharp, broken twigs. Living leaves poked into his ears, burrowed themselves into his shirt and swatted the back of his neck. Shattered pieces of wood stabbed at his back, stomach and legs, digging into vulnerable skin. Jack kept his eyes clenched shut through the ordeal, only one thought inside the darkness: he was still churning albeit much slower.

One arm had been caught in the rough tangle wrapped firmly around his chest, the other, his right one, instinctively curling around his bowed head as he hit, felt sore and shredded by scratches.

With no warning, a strange gray-white flash flickered behind his eyes, and then darkness returned to ease pain and horror, and the awful spinning in Jack's head. The moment calmly carried him into an eerie brightness that became the sun-bleached beach, and bizarrely enough, he seemed to have acquired Mr. Cotton's parrot's wings as he glided in lower to stare in amazed disbelief at a limp, three-limbed being wedged into a large, tilted green-barbed web suspended at the precipice of a cliff.

He lurched into hurting and dark as his body jarred to a stop, backbone pinned to a rough surface. A severed mass of roping vine squeezed into his ribcage and both untwined legs hung in the air somewhere above his head, his ragged sash brushing against the side of his nose. But incongruously enough, his stinging arm rested comfortably on a flat, smooth facade that felt almost cool beneath his clenched fingers.

Jack loathed opening his eyes, fearful that his rampant imaginings wouldn't do his present situation justice. Pain radiated off various bruised, sore and aching parts of his pummeled body, the revolving inside his head fading into a mild sense of nausea. And for a reason he couldn't fathom, there was also a dull buzzing like a laconic hornet in his ears although he couldn't recall seeing too many insects.

There was no need for parrot's wings to tell Jack that he'd been haphazardly secured to the bole of a tree by thin vine ropes, abetted by tiny branches. Yet even as the woeful dawning hit, the fragile vines began to crack, grind and snap with fierce protest under the incredible strain of maintaining human weight, especially _wriggling and squirming_ weight, as the pirate finally opened his eyes and tried to free his pinioned left arm.

He had no idea how it was possible, but it seemed that his right forearm rested upon the narrow rim of a wide, oblong-shaped obsidian stone bowl near the width of the _Pearl'_s deck. And the carved features – if the slanted stone protuberance approximately the size of a ship's main gun was indeed the bridge of a long nose – beneath to support it, had the impressive vertical dimensions of his entire ship.

A native temple or shrine?

Snap. Snap. Craaaack. Snap. Craaack. Snap.

In only minutes, the beleaguered, overburdened vines gave up the battle and would have dumped Jack into the stone bowl headfirst had they relinquished his limb as well. Instead, while pieces of fragmented branch and torn leaves fluttered around him, he found himself dangling a few inches above the stone, yanking furiously in exasperation at his trapped left wrist.

Craaack. Snap. Plop!

Showered by a deluge of leaves and broken pieces of vine, Jack just sat in the huge stone bowl too stunned and exhausted to move. One curious look to the left told him that he was on the right side of the beach behind a thin veil of trees in some kind of half-hidden alcove against the rock face.

"No Sparrow on the bloody menu today," he groused, picking tiny remnants of vine out of his matted hair. Grisly images came unbidden of what he'd escaped not that long ago and he shuddered. "By the look of it, these natives are long since gone," he assured himself, sitting in undisturbed mounds of sand and dried leaves. Still, he didn't want to look too closely for fear of finding chunks of bone among the debris.

Nor did he want to take an inventory of his physical misfortunes, but his body wouldn't budge until he knew it could without further harming itself. Yep, his kneebone throbbed, both scratched wrists and the left side of his neck stung but hardly bled, his ribcage ached and the world had just now started to stabilize itself inside his head. He wanted to think that the roiling in his stomach was just hunger pains, probably attempting to remind him that if he didn't get back to the tide pool soon, his deserted fish would be fowl food.

"Not like I deserted them for no good reason," he grumbled, rubbing his painful knee through dusty, dirt-spattered breeches. He plucked a few itching leaves out of his drooping left sleeve - along with a tiny, frantic red-shelled insect that he didn't recognize. It took wing before he could flick it carelessly off his forearm. "Oi, done with the climbin'." Wearily he pulled himself up alongside the waist-high ebony bowl rim to test his weight upon the tender limb. It didn't appreciate the abuse, but nor did it buckle under him as he feared that it might. "Not an undertakin' what, ow, I'm takin' again. For anythin'; for any purpose, be it dog, man, or fish-devouring monster." Jack grimaced when he half-turned to see the impossible distance he was from the ground. If a man had walked by to admire the native craftsmanship, such as it were, he'd probably look to the pirate no larger than his extended forefinger "Well, except for maybe gettin' out of this cauldron thing, ey?"

Jack leaned a little further over the rim, trying to judge how far down the stone nose was when _something_ moved under his left foot. Naturally, he leapt backward to stare at the leaf-strewn bowl floor in uncertainty. His right boot, however, dropped into a narrow square-shaped depression that he hadn't detected before. "What the… shoddy architect to be sure..." A careful step forward and his left foot sunk about an inch further and almost disappeared into gray shadow. "Bloody invisible stairs now?"

Gripping the ledge to keep his balance, Jack cautiously descended into the dark temple opening. The crudely uneven stone steps ran down against a rough, vine-shrouded wall, musty and damp from the recent rains. The pungent odor of decay amid a miasma of other foul smells hit him as he ducked under the overhead edge. Aligned circles of slanted sunlight penetrated the enclosing gloom through three large oval cuts in the rock's exterior behind him.

Carved out eyes and mouth, no doubt.

Small drifts of sand, dry mud and dead debris littered the worn stone floor, sagging spider webs and feeble vine limbs extending from the moist walls decorated enormous, crumbling, pale gray warrior-garbed stone statues set into each corner like weaponless sentinels, but nothing of any value present to entice a pirate.

Well, _almost _nothing.

Those glittering green eyes in the partially-obliterated stone faces _could_ be gems - jade or maybe emerald - but it was rather difficult to tell outside of the stationary spheres of dim light. And short of taking Turner's anvil to their crystalline limestone bodies, that's where they were probably going to stay, Jack determined sullenly, surprised by his own lack of avarice. Besides, they were too big for him to knock over and he could barely reach their wide-strapped shoulders from where he stood.

But the innate pirate in him urged him to explore a little further for more accessible treasures.

'_Now, Jaaack, that be hardly like ye to walk away so easily from such a fortune in jewels,'_ Barbossa taunted him from somewhere in the darkness. '_After ye lost all that gold_…'

"No, _you_ and your stupid curse lost the gold," he gritted. "And what you suppose I got for me considerable pains when I went back, eh? Your bloody sneaky undead monkey. No cave, no island, no treasure. Not so much as a floatin' coin," he mused, picking up one of the smaller, more rounded white statue heads from layers of powdery dust near the wall. The large jeweled eyes of the child were an intriguing faceted purple - amethyst? - with tiny cracks and chips where eyelids should be, as if someone had _tried _to remove the gems and then given up. "Likely scavengers," he chided. "A shame that. Always tryin' to steal artifacts and valuable things outta tombs what don't belong to 'em."

He frowned and hefted the small statue head, slyly tossing it up to catch it one-handed. Unlike an Aztec coin, this _could _break apart and still have a lot of value left to it. And the stones were _very_ pretty, thank you.

Not that he didn't have a lot to covet here. Several more half-demolished jewel-eyed statues of all sizes cluttered the walls around an incredibly crude sketching. Again, limited light left most of the faded black drawing lost in steep gray shadows, but what Jack could see resembled what might have been an attempt at a rough chronicle charting of a journey. Lopsided triangles pressed into larger circles all lumped together against a huge square. Ships wrecked against the formidable rocks? On the other side was another large square reaching higher with a curved line connecting the two like a great underwater bridge surrounded by smaller squares with big holes in their centers.

The long-sleeping cartographer in Jack absently nudged aside a puzzled pirate, forefinger tracing the white dust-spotted path of the multiple shipwrecks with fascination as they seemed to pile up around the seawall near the cove's narrow entrance. If he understood this map right then he was stuck on a small island after all, but there was a much bigger one close behind it - or so the natives had believed - and at one time had actually_ met. _

Either that or the wavering line meant that Calypso had _another_ pet - one gigantic snake-like sea beastie whose lair was somewhere down between the two islands.

As if his unwanted thought had been overheard, a slithering noise whispered through dry leaves to the right and startled Jack. He jumped and dropped the decimated statue head. But instead of bursting into a choking cloud of dusty white powder, it landed on a clump of leaves, wobbled by his right boot, and with the oddest limping, crunching sound, much like a misshapen cannon ball traveling over a floor covered with pebbles, it rolled along to where the stone wall seemed to turn a corner deeper into the blackened temple.

"So where you off to, 'ey?"

Jack watched its bumpy progress, too engrossed with the image of purple gems in a pile of loose white powder to recall what had spooked him. What _did_ unnerve him, however, was the noticeable lack of a colliding explosion. At any second, he had expected to hear stone smashing into stone, but instead, a subsequently strange, half-muted noise reached his ears that he was at a loss to identify.

Errrrrrr-pla-plink, errrrr-pla-plink, errr-pla-plink.

That wasn't possible. Not only had the silly little decapitated ball of stone missed the wall, but it also sounded as if it might be moving in a downward direction on another set of steps!

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TBC:

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**Part 7d ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Lair Of The Sea Beastie**

AN: I'm betting that Jack wished he had that burning oar about now!


	11. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs4

AN: This is where I'm supposed to say thank you to my reviewer(s). Well, I've already thanked her, so I'll offer more thanks to loyal readers of my other stories instead!

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Sweetest C. Author 67 - Not to worry, I'm returning to _Misplaced Hearts _and a possibly irate Calypso summoned by Lizzie to stop the thieves, but first I have to nudge Jack out of the mysterious temple!

Jennifer Lynn Weston - Wow, what can I say? You've been with me since the drabbles of _Ponderings Of A Trapped And Injured Pirate_. APLNM will probably be finished in 2010. I'm stuck on how to bring the _Pearl _back, if you know what I mean! 

Starling Rising - Yes! Finally someone who got the message in _Prevailing Insanity_! My best bud pointed it out after AWE, and asked why they'd do that to otherwise great stories. 

SherylMeBud – Jack is only playing with Norrington here. There are _no_ cannons on ships, Royal Navy or otherwise. You recall, he said earlier in his cell, 'I know those _guns _– that's the_ Pearl!'_

Arquenniel - Thanks bunches for the mention, and glad you thought _I Hate Pirates_ funny! I know that your unique _Battle of Brimstone Hill_is such a riot that my sister turned the TV up so she couldn't hear me choke with laughter! I love this perspective of them!

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AN: I can see this probably turning out a 6-8 parter as Jack hasn't found – oops. O-kay, let's just get him out of the creepy temple, shall we, before somebody cries _Indiana Jones _and really big rocks start rolling!

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**Part 7d ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Lair Of The Sea Beastie**

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Splaying his left palm against the marked wall, Jack caught a glimpse of the reddened lines encircling his wrist, and then moved into the encompassing darkness, hand running over the unseen map. Sure enough, somewhere around shoulder level on the other side of the turn, the chamber's wall did indeed slant inward like a long-abandoned hearth. Perplexed, Jack stooped to touch the floor, expecting a brittle bundle of petrified logs, but there was only dried mud and leaves. He muttered a curse at the lack of illumination, and reached further in waving his right hand around in the empty air. No cobwebs.

"That's _very_ curious," he murmured, and then poked his head down inside next to his extended forearm to listen.

Errr-pla-plink, err-pla-plink. Splash!

Splash? Jack arched his brows and drew quickly back, a twinge in his bruised knee making him wince. "Ow! So what sort of steps, I wonder, is it what go straight into water, eh?" He leaned against the dark wall, rubbing at his leg as he sadly pictured a modest fortune in jewels bobbing out to sea. Away from him - as treasure was wont to do even _before_ the curse. Yet at the same time, it was hard to suppress a grin when he could see the bewildered looks on sailor's faces as the little bejeweled stone head floated by their ship! "Your welcome, mates," he sighed, already a bit depressed by the loss.

Should he go after it then, and the devil with the darkness?

Odds were good that there was no water below when the temple had first been built, he reasoned to himself, pulling an errant leaf out between the beads swinging at the side of his head. Or they hadn't taken into account that there was a lot of water close by. 

Or maybe they _had_. Maybe that really was their purpose here.

"Temples are for the worshippin' of -- _what_?" Jack groaned, turning back to face the wall in frustrating darkness. The atrociously rendered images both tantalized and confused him. What if he'd misread the symbols' meanings because he had failed to see the completed sketch? What if said wall - the one that he could not see just inches beyond his nose, had a huge warning, done in that same sad handiwork, plastered all across it: 

'Danger! Stop! Enter Not The Lair Of The Sea Beastie!'

Jack shuddered at his own presumptive interpretation. Well, that _could_ help explain why none of the statues had their jeweled eyes missing. He had trouble though, with the idea of a riled little sea beastie snarling, and robbers fleeing like their tails were afire! Amused, he smiled in the darkness. 

"Oi, was it _little_ sea beastie what I said, Mr. Gibbs?"

"Hmm, can't rightly recall as it was. Here, have yerself another rum, Jack, and tell me and the lads here, how ye got off the island!" the old sailor enthused inside the pirate's head.

"Ahh, now that's an interestin' story, to be sure," he mused somberly. "How was it that I _did_? Will have? Plan to?" He finally offered himself a mental shrug.

Weak daylight peering through the carved holes behind Jack, began to fade as if a trail of heavy clouds passed over the sun, but an accompanying chill breeze across the chamber promised a storm approaching. "Time to be goin'," he decided hastily, thinking about the water below and the chances that it may well rise above the steps when it rained. The widest and lowest of exterior holes was not at floor level, as one might expect, but about even with Jack's chest. 

Apparently, these natives did not see the necessary convenience of a simple door when they had two perfectly good upper windows and a rather trick entry port up on top. 

Unfortunately, the sudden swirling of wind had disturbed more than leaves and dust on the chamber floor. Just as he took the first blind step toward the temple's maw, a warning hiss emanated from off to his left - too close to the opening. He froze, belatedly recalling to his dismay, what had caused him to drop the valuable statue head in the first place. 

Bugger. Nothing worse than an annoyed snake. All fangs, fork-tongue and coil-ey – just like the little sea beastie whose lair he _really_ didn't want to be any closer to.

Remaining tensed against the wall, Jack quickly mapped out the darkened chamber from memory, even as it grew grayer outside. No, it wasn't all that big. Maybe he could fit six tightly packed longboats inside, but the way to the roof was also on the opposite side of the single opening. Two stoic statues stood between him and the steps. He considered somehow tipping one of them over into the hole, but the likelihood of getting the trajectory exactly right was not the same as aiming a ship's gun at a close target.

A horrendous reverberating clash of thunder on taut nerves made Jack gasp. The snake hissed its menacing reply as the entire chamber flashed white. One horrific glimpse of the trembling red crest, threatening yellow-gold eyes above outstretched fangs now less than four feet away, and the terrorized pirate let out a squawk, which Cotton's parrot would envy, swung down into a nimble crouch and lurched through the hearth-like entry, barreling into the dark tunnel with no other rational thought other than to escape the chamber and its wicked boarder.

Of course, he forgot about the short steps just inside. 

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TBC:

**Part 7e ****– ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Such A Pretty Headdress**

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AN: Small homage to Indy there. As for Jack, well, he's been island-bound and alone for a while now, and it's starting to take its toll on him – as you see. 


	12. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs5

AN: Again, this is where I say thank you to my reviewers. And I also want to offer thanks to more readers of my other stories!

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Kate -Anon - I greatly appreciate your extremely complimentary reviews of _When Sparrow Is In The Game_ and _By Touch. _

Rokhal - Thank you so much for the alert on _Price of Resurrection _- so what did you like about it? Your_Captain Turner and the Organ_is awesome!

Madam Pudifoot - Ah, the dear one who quietly sets story alerts. Thank you for your silent support of _Lady of Power._

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**Part 7e ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Such A Pretty Headdress**

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With a cry of outraged surprise, Jack cleared all three in a staggering leap and dropped into a clumsy somersault, favoring his left knee, nearly plastering himself to the opposite wall. Shaking himself out of a half-stunned daze, a scraped elbow and protesting knee later, Jack realized how foolhardy it was for anyone to run in pitch dark, no matter _what_ he felt to be chasing at his heels.

"That was bloody graceful," he wheezed, cradling his sore elbow, unable to straighten his knee now without grimacing. He guessed the limb would swell up nicely before too much longer. "And really _stupid_, mate," he admonished himself, laboriously climbing to his feet, half stiff-legged. "Seems the lair it be as I see it - or rather as I _can't _see it."

He couldn't hope to muster a decent run now if a whole hoard of wildly painted natives burst into the tunnel with bristling spears and proclaimed him the new master and lord of the sea beastie. Sacrificially, of course.

"I'd prefer just stayin' captain," Jack muttered, leaning heavily against the wall to take the weight off his bad knee. "But I've really no objection to bearers carryin'--" He realized then that he was addressing the surrounding darkness and broke off, chuckling to himself. "So no bearers, 'eh?"

As Jack wearily pushed himself off the supportive wall, faint sounds of running water penetrated the stifling darkness, giving him direction. Aching, exhausted, and limping toward the steady, almost hypnotic patter, he resented how the statue head had made the trip down two sets of steps in mere minutes.

"Like it didn't wreck it's little self's knee flyin' down bloody steps," he groused, wishing that he had the boat's oar to lean on. Or even to light on fire - again. This pervasive, almost silent darkness was too unsettling. No moon, wind whispering in the dark sails, or stars to keep him company. And as much as he dreaded what might await him at the other end of his sightless solitude, he was infallibly drawn by the sounds of incoming water.

Wonderful water. He could drink an ocean of it, salt or no; he could throw himself into its refreshing coolness and let it carry his battered body where it would - to the depths or the keel of his beloved ship probably somewhere along the Straits of Florida by now.

Or possibly lurking just outside Tortuga searching the town for one map-stealing pirate, he laughed wryly, kind of glad that he hadn't said anything to Gibbs of that sneaky impulse when the rest of them had been on the decks celebrating Beckett's defeat.

Ha! He'd even outwitted that undead monkey, though the raggedy little thing _had _looked a bit seasick about then.

All the good it had done him - he'd lost Feng's map in the storm.

Oww!!

Great. His left boot had become a vise around his leg, no doubt threatening to choke off the blood flow to his poor limb if he didn't take it off soon. He glanced down at it briefly, realizing that he could actually see a fuzzy gray-edged outline of his leg as well as the open palm that his brain had insisted on waving in front of a semi-relieved face. Daylight?

Between his splayed fingers, a half-circle of faintest grayish-blue appeared. Mesmerized, Jack slowly lowered his right hand, eyes focusing straight ahead. The hint of light became stronger as he shuffled forward again. He could just make out an arched landing. Pale gray stone festooned with living, green vines.

Exhilaratingly fresh, welcome ocean sounds and smells had reached him; salt water, fish; waves intermittently lapping at the rocks – all mingling with the consistent, loud splashing of water striking water from beyond the archway.

Jack blinked to adjust his eyes to the brightness, stopping short of the inviting landing to rub his leg, half-ready to confess that he was lost. The temple, he knew, had faced west across the beach. But he thought the tunnel had maybe curved after those first three steps sort of northeast - or maybe it was the dizziness? Northeast would probably lead around to the sea cliff past the big rocks on this side of the cove – far beyond where he had started.

Bugger. He wasn't good for a climb, swimming wasn't an option, and returning to that creepy, snake-infested chamber would not happen.

No, wait. There, to his right. He'd almost missed it, nearly concealed in the wider shadow of the imposing archway. It appeared to be a darkened, small-arced entrance – leading back to his beach or somewhere else? Had there possibly been others branching off the main tunnel that he'd never seen?

From what he could see through the archway, the late-morning sky had become a hazy, cloudless, wavering pale blue with no visible horizon, and what was that towering whitish-blue thing to his right? Wasn't that another one of those tall, guarding statues? What was it doing standing waist-deep in the ocean like that, all arrogance and majestic-ness with that black feathery wide-banded necklace and – ohhhh, a _gem_-studded headdress?

"Such a pretty headdress." Jack blinked slowly, staring, uncertain of what _else _he saw of its unusual design. That ferocious snake with the strange fan-thing on its head – there is was again - mounted in the center and made fancy with glowy gold black-streaked eyes. He shuddered, unconsciously taking a few steps to the right, the dark entryway behind him. "Are those not more gems what's bulgin' outta the head? Where's the beach gone, and why's the floor made of -- water?" he wondered vaguely, noticing the deeply sunken chamber for the first time.

And also something round, floating and white.

"Oi, hello there, little man," Jack called amiably down at the missing miniature statue head sailing serenely past the outstretched white alabaster arm of a second, no, third one, he counted with a sigh.

Four, if you wanted to count Mr. Snake Headdress, who really wasn't standing out in the ocean - it had just seemed like it to Jack because of the floor-sized bowl's reflection on the far stone wall. It didn't make him any less eerie to look at though, especially with the sodden strings of live seaweed coiled loosely around his wrists and forearms as if he were a rigid sea god overseeing the daunting task of his three equally immobile minions. And all of the water-bound minion-statues, absurdly enough, appeared to be framed by what looked, at first, like gold-rimmed handles, but turned out to be cleverly arced alcoves. He couldn't tell how shallow they were because the earlier shadows in the chamber had now darkly cloaked most of the other side.

Intimidating Mr. Snake Headdress, apparently deemed special, had a smaller, flatter, and wider alcove about two feet over his bedecked head, and water steadily spurted over his left arm into the room bowl from at least four lined out-of-the-wall fountains.

Enthralled by this unexpectedly amazing display, Jack's first thought was what are these stone people doing here; his second was, of course, how would it be possible for him to get one of those red jewels - rubies? - out of the headdress without drowning himself.

From where he stood by the archway, Jack couldn't see where the water filtered from, but the odd tiny fish, colorful shell bits and more looping strings of seaweed gave him a pretty good idea.

While glancing up, he'd also found the source of persistent gray light as raindrops began to plop upon the 'portside' statue. Several feet above its stone bowed head, three large holes had been cut just below the vaulted roof of the chamber in the same configuration as the first one.

Jack groaned. It didn't matter which way the idol's facade faced, he was in trouble if that was the only way out of this place.

No, temples and caverns always had more than _one_ way out - just not in the obvious places one would look.

Somewhat bolstered by this, Jack let his gaze fall to the sunken chamber, but the sea water rippled and eddied too much to even clearly see the statue's legs far below the surface.

He considered taking a closer look when he realized that he was about to step onto what appeared to be a raised platform walkway, which circled the left half of the chamber, and stopped just behind the 3rd statue.

In truth, however, the unsettling sight of a rain-slicked platform, the sense of numbness in his left leg, and a waning urgency advised him to wait till a little later. Yes. he may feel hungry and exhausted, but at least he wasn't getting soaked in a leaky dinghy.

Decision reluctantly made, Jack turned back through the archway with a less ambitious plan in mind, too fatigued to notice that the little statue head no longer rolled on the undulating bowl's blue-green surface.

ooooo

TBC:

**Part 7f ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Milady Wants A Ruby Necklace**


	13. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs6

AN: This is where I say thank you to my reviewer(s). And I also want to offer thanks to more readers of my other stories!

Florencia7 - Yes, _Taking It Back _was Will being noble enough to say something he didn't want to, but felt it needed to be said. And congrats to you on your amazing Have We Met Before? Wow! I don't know of _any (Sparrabeth) ever _to get almost_ 3,000 _reviews for one story!

Starling Rising - I don't really think that he believed it (_Taking It Back_) was possible even when he said it.

Jennifer Lynn Weston - Oh, yes, the events of _Lady of Power _felt plausible enough to give both Jack & Beckett reasons to hate each other!

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**Part 7f ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Milady Wants A Ruby Necklace**

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He took only a moment to study the thick, prevalent draping of healthy vines, glanced through the archway again at the rain, then went to work determinedly striping every shred of greenery in his sight. "Sorry for the vandalizin'," he apologized to the wall, and tossed another armful into the widening pile behind him. "But I'm needin' this more than you, sides they're a bit too ubiquitous to worry about, 'ey?

As rough beds went, it was hardly the most comfortable one he'd ever pulled together with available natural materials, but at least it wouldn't turn chill and damp by morning as many other similarly crude ground constructs had.

It took a bit of twisting, bending and tearing of branches to make the bed relatively flat, but his grateful body thanked him for the effort and granted him leaf-embraced sleep almost instantly despite the sounds of crashing water through the nearby archway.

At first, the dreams were elusive; snatches of excited voices prodding him to save his ship but he couldn't see what endangered it. Then a red-crested sea beastie appeared and not much smaller than the Kraken, but it exhaled a veritable flood of rubies, sapphires and emeralds from its wide gullet instead of fire or slime gunk. His awed, frantic crew was too busy scooping up the gems to notice the swamped ship sinking under the stone's weight. Stranger still, Elizabeth stood at his side, her hand pressing on his wrist, a questing look in her eyes.

'If you are the good man that I know you are, Jack, you would get some of those jewels for me. Those rubies would make a lovely necklace, don't you think?'

He must have mentioned something about a dangerous snake tempting them, because a new voice, one that he could neither locate nor recognize, said almost too softly: "So he doesn't yet know how she created Fire Streak to protect 'em."

"Fire _what_?"

The only response was an excitable flapping of wings. But as half-wakefulness returned, he thought that he felt a gentle tugging at his boots, and an odd aroma filled the warm air; an aroma suspiciously like that of pipe tobacco. And then he dreamt of his hands bursting full of pebble-sized rubies as he walked up to Elizabeth, her brocaded back turned to him to watch the frenzied activity down on the deck.

"Milady wants a ruby necklace than so shall she have one," he declared, proud of himself. However, as the young woman in the pale blue shawl turned, it was no longer Elizabeth but a half-forgotten ghost from his past. He let the jewels slip through his fingers in shock. "Angelina?"

Her youthful, attractive face had not changed in over fourteen years, but the remembered affection in her eyes had turned to disdain. "So you leave me to rot in the Carolinas, Jack, and now you would seek to buy my affection back with these baubles?"

"Rot?" Jack echoed, mystified, empty hands flying defensively to his chest. "No, that can't be. You told me you _wanted_ to stay in Charlotte with your uncle's family so they couldn't find you!" He cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. "They _didn't_ find you, did they?"

"You will _never_ know," she hissed, "if I married Sir Henry Altworth or not, will you?"

Now that was wrong, outright spiteful and stung. In irritation, he reached to catch her wrist but the wispy shawl was already turning into watery blue mist, the odor of tobacco strong in his nostrils. His mouth tasted peculiarly of coconut milk and raw mushroom. Yeecch! And why were his feet cold?

"How restful was that?" he moaned, opening his eyes, blinking at a chamber surprisingly bathed in a pleasant soft orange glow in place of the hazed blue-gray.

Lit torches? He had seen no brackets for them and they most certainly didn't light themselves. And then there was that smell of tobacco still permeating the warm misted air.

No sound of fountaining water. No rainstorm.

Thoroughly disoriented, Jack propped himself onto is elbows, grimacing as he looked slowly around for answers. He could recall hearing a male voice, but there was _no one_ here. Both boots now sat below the vine bed. The deep blue-black bruising covering his knee was not pretty, he noted, but nor was it swollen as badly as it must have been earlier. Puzzled, He flexed the limb, finding it a bit tender and probably not ready to hold his weight yet.

Fine, he could lie there for a bit longer and listen to - virtually nothing. Or, he amended, spotting one of the torch brackets on the inside of the archway; he could find a way out since he had been so generously provided with light. His first few steps on chill stone were a little shaky, but he managed to get to the archway with no help from the now-denuded wall.

There were actually four brass-like torch brackets - two set high on both sides of the inner arch, and all of them ablaze with welcoming golden light as if to keep the night at bay and provide modest warmth for any live occupants.

Wait, night? That could_ not _be.

Jack momentarily forgot about the torches to peer around the arch and gaze up at the three openings. Oh, no. Not only were they all as black as the _Pearl's_ sails, but two of them showed whitish specks like stars. The third and lower one, however, had part of its left corner opening blocked by something with slanted streaks of red, blue and bright yellow - and it moved. No, it actually swayed, hopped, and swayed again from side to side.

To his dismay, Jack had watched Cotton's parrot dance too often to mistake those erratic movements for any other creature. Well, that explained the sounds of wings he'd heard earlier, but not much else.

"Oi, you up there!"

The parrot fluttered, turned in a quick circle, and danced again, a little faster than before as if nervous.

"Down here, mate!" Jack called helpfully. "Where you be from, 'ey?"

"Ruuarrrk!" The bird rustled its colorful feathers, flew up to circle the roof, and then perch in the right eye opening, as if contemplating whether it wanted to respond or leave.

"Ahh. Touchy, 'eh?" the pirate ventured. "Look, I'm no danger to you - no weapons, see?" He held up both open palms, feeling slightly foolish that he was attempting to reassure a skeptical parrot of his harmlessness. "I'm just tryin' to have a conversation with -"

"Ruarrrkwkk!" The parrot apparently had decided that it didn't want to hear any more and rudely leapt out into the night in a flash of brilliant yellow and red.

"- an anti-social parrot," Jack finished sourly, lowering his arms to his sides. "Fine, off you go, then. Feathery nuisance, anyway. Would've been no real help gettin' me outta here." He returned his attention to the fixed torch brackets, half-wondering why the water in-flow had stopped.

"Tides, that's what it is, mate," he informed himself, pulling at the bracket handle. "The natural overflow from the tide pools is what governs the input."

The bracket handle didn't budge.

"Question is, where's the water go from -- bloody thing's not loosenin'!" Jack cursed, fitfully yanking at the stubborn arm. Frustrated, he searched the floor amid the debris of leaves and shell fragments for anything sturdy that could burn, but nothing presented itself. And embarrassingly enough, that's when he remembered that there were_ three _other torches!

The second bracket handle _did _cooperate, and Jack had started toward the alcove next to the arch when the flapping noise stopped him. Still holding the torch upright, he turned back to the sunken chamber. The smug creature sat on atop portside's head preening itself.

Jack pursed his lips, disgusted. "I've nothin' to say to you, _featherhead_, so go on about your - well, whatever it is birds go about doin', savvy?"

"Rrrkkk. Percy, get them stones!!"

"_What_?" Jack almost dropped the burning torch. He should have guessed the silly thing was pirate-owned. "Your name's_ Percy_?"

The parrot flourished several red feathers indignantly, and danced in a furious, hopping circle that almost crossed Jack's eyes to witness. "Perceeeeeee, Percy, Percy, git down off da mast, raaukk, ya daft li'l feathered-devil!"

"Feathered-devil, hmm?" Jack smirked at the bird. "Good one." He took a few cursory steps closer to the sunken chamber to look into the murky dark green shadows below. He thought that he might have seen another, larger filter like the one over Mr. Snake Headdress. It looked to be cut to the left of the 'starboard' statue and what was likely the statue's knee, but it would take a dive all the way down there to be certain, and Jack didn't think he could trust his _own_ knee for the task.

"So, feathered-devil, where's all that water goin', 'ey? Any chance of me gettin' outta here and not havin' to do it holdin' me breath?"

"Rrrwaaacckkk. Perccceeeeeeee, Percy, Percy!"

"And that's _Captain_ to you," he returned with a rueful grin. "Now if you'd kindly excuse me, Percy times three, I've my ownplan I mean to follow - to either get answers, get drunk, or get free of this mad place. Dependin', of course, on what that room over there has to offer. And at this point, I could do with the drink." He raised the torch higher and headed once more for the enticingly dark alcove.

ooooo

TBC:

**Part 7g ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Give Percy His Due**

AN: Any back-story not specifically drawn from CotBP, DMC or AWE, is courtesy of the _Seas of Justice Chronicles_.


	14. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs7

AN: Just 2 tiny, little reviews, folks, and then the 'forever stuck at 22' (since 11/14/07) curse is broken!! Yay!!

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Summary: Jack finds -- Oh, nevermind, I'll let him tell the story for himself.

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**Part 7g ****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Give Percy His Due**

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It turned out to be a storage room.

The arc-ceiling room had been stocked with crates, barrels, sacks, and jars in neat, separate stacks without benefit of shelves, but using a spaced line of narrow depressions carved out of the stone wall. The neatness of it, in fact, would have given a certain swamp witch a jealous fit. There appeared to be a few questionable-looking things in larger jars that she _might_ have endorsed, anyway.

At least nothing in there bore the much-dreaded EITC brand - with exception of Jack - but the _single_ letter burned into his flesh had the initial intent of signifying condemnation, nothing proprietary.

Jack was industriously rooting around in a barrel marked 'beans' when Percy flew in, squawking what sounded like 'bewarefirestreak'. He glided over Jack's head and past the highest stack of barrels to land on a tall, dark cloth-covered object hidden in the corner between a few unfinished statues of decidedly imperfect female proportions. Jack, obeying his stomach, had dismissed them as artistic rejects as he'd seen only male worshipper/sentinels on display, and the overabundant swirl of cloth devoted to foot-to-shoulder attire did nothing to peak his interest in any way.

"Shut it, Percy," he growled, forcing himself to nibble the bitter tasting brown beans. The dried biscuits in the barrel beside it were less appetizing, as were the stunted mushrooms in the next one. Sacks and barrels full of flour, sugar, powder, oats, grain, and other inedible things he'd never allow brought aboard his ship, surrounded him. All items easily stored for cooking, he knew, but nary enough for a decent meal. Chancing one side-long glance at the collection of half-filled jars, and Jack was sadly reminded of Tia Dalma's assorted hanging oddities around her shack. Although that greenish-gray grainy stuff was new to him, he thought, making a sick face as he guessed that it might actually be pulverized _mold_. That cured him of peering into any more jars.

"Bleeccchh!"

"Rrrraukkkk! Bewarefirestreak!"

"Will you _please_ shut it, Percy," Jack complained, turning away from the wall to survey the rest of the room in hopeless defeat. "That bein' unless you know a place what has--" And then he stiffened as a chill went through him, and he recalled the bodiless voice in his half-sleep state. "Wait, did you say _Fire Streak_?"

"_So he doesn't know yet how she created Fire Streak to protect 'em."_

"Rrwwrukkk! Bewarefirestreak!" Percy flapped about excitedly atop the covered statue, twisting and shifting the cloth under his clawed feet. "Firrrre Streeeeeeeak. Raaawwk. Tell the pirate, tell the pirate! Firrrre Strrreeeaaak!"

The lunatic bird had Jack's full attention now. "Whooa, wait, _tell the pirate_? Percy, that would, I've no doubt at this point, be _me_." Exasperated, he caught the trailing edge of his red bandana and held it up in his left fist, shaking it at the creature. "See? Pirate!"

"_So he doesn't know yet how she created Fire Streak to protect 'em."_

"Percy, tell the pirate," Jack half-mocked and half-pleaded as he approached the cloaked statue. "Please, can you just tell the pirate _who_ was it what created this... _Fire Streak_? And what bloody is it - odd snake, sea beastie, or a really nasty, gut-burning drink what leaves all hapless pillagers and thieves quite ill?"

"Perceeeee, tell the pirate," the bird screeched in a frustrating echo, then hopped off the draped head to alight on the half-visible up swung forearm, the hand half-cupped as if to hold something that wasn't there.

That's when Jack noticed the carved wide-banded circlet embossed with a flare-headed snake curling around a crab and a wavy-tentacled squid – the _Kraken_. He swallowed in wide-eyed disbelief, now recognizing that memorable ornament from a very old painting hung for centuries - in the main foyer of the Brethren Council Room.

"Ah, give Percy his due."

It was the same room in which Barbossa had hurried Elizabeth and himself through, he recalled in mild amusement. He wanted no one, most especially _her_ to see a tribute to the defeat of the temperate sea goddess, Calypso.

Poor old Hector. He wouldn't know that Jack had seen the portrait years earlier when his father, then the Pirate Lord of Madagascar, had brought him to Shipwreck Cove.

_"Aye, she were a powerful one, Jackie boy, no mistakin' that_." His father had sighed with a thoughtful frown, fingering the mandolin in his lap. _"Took us three strong-willed lads ta trick that thing offa her arm. And sad ta say, not afore she'd loosed one a those deadly pets of hers to curse the Dutchman what betrayed her."_

_"Curse him how?"_

_"'Fraid that be 'fore our days, boy. All lost to myths and legends. Same as the tale - no one here dare talk 'bout - sayin' her followers stole back the bracelet from a drunken Pirate Lord to hide it away on a lost island for a time what might bring her return."_

"Not so much myths and legends _now_, Dad!"

Jack gasped, ripping the sheathing cloth away from the statue so fast that an abruptly dislodged Percy protested the loss of a few blue feathers. "Sorry, mate, you--" He forgot what he was about to say, awed by the perfect stone replication of one woman's timeless beauty. "Calypso!"

Only the defiantly mischievous eyes remained of the fierce voodoo priestess he had spared from being stoned to death all those years ago by a mob of superstitious villagers. The angelically fragile face surrounded by wild raven tresses, and slender body wound in flowing pale blue-green certainly belonged to the ancient trophy painting he had once admired at his father's side.

Jack took a few steps back to appreciate the rendered sea goddess in her regal pose. He hadn't been there then, but he understood from Mr. Gibbs that this, unfortunately, was _not _the more pleasing sight she had favored her rescuers or captors. He ran the torch light up and down the white stone to allow his discovery to fully sink in. If it had not before, it did when he saw the crab talisman placed around her neck.

A deep sea-green talisman to be exact. Jack shuddered and retreated a couple more steps back in dread of the unwanted memory; of him clutching her prized talisman to his chest thirteen years ago, the eerie music that had led him onto the _Lady Dominque's _deck, Beckett looking at him rather strangely behind his cocked pistol...

NO! Best leave it in the past, mate, or you'll be conjurin' up much worse things than that...

Okay. Finding the Calypso statue hidden - for who knew how long - told Jack a bit more about what kind of people had built the temple. And seeing as they worshipped _her,_ they'd also made an idol of anything symbolizing what she was? Or maybe they idolized _both_. But revelations aside, what it _didn't _reveal was another way out of the bloody place. And that's what was most important to him.

That, and knowing what was this now infamous _Fire Streak, _of course

Well, _also_ who'd lit the torches, removed his boots, and generally disrupted Jack's sleep by bloody smoking a pipe. That was important, too - for his own present peace of mind.

ooooo

TBC:

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AN: Any back-story not _specifically _drawn from CotBP, DMC or AWE, is courtesy of the _Seas of Justice Chronicles_.


	15. Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs8

AN: YAY!! The 'dreaded 22 reviews' curse is broken!! Waaa hooooo!! (And there goes my poor cat heading for the bedroom.) Thank you so very much to the wonderfulness of Jennifer Lynn Weston & Starling Rising! You guys are the 'official curse-breakers'!

Ahem. Composed now. But I think my cat went under the bed.

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Summary: Let's just say our hapless pirate doesn't want to leave without at least a few valuable stones and nothing is _ever_ simple for Jack when it comes to treasure.

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**Part 7h /****Have A Drink On Me, Your Nibs **

**- Purple Gems In The Water**

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Jack really doubted that Percy was that talented a bird, although he did finally manage to 'tell the pirate', in his own odd fashion, whom Fire Streak _might _be.

Nice choices, that: Resident snake guard or a waiting-to-be-summoned sea beastie.

And how did one summon a sea beastie to rise from an infinite watery hibernation, Jack reasoned, if one had such a need to?

Pausing to retrieve the black tarp-like cloth from the floor, Jack tossed it around his shoulders finding the material heavier than it looked. He offered the stone Calypso a polite nod and vague shrug of apology for pilfering her draping. "Not like you'll be havin' a need for it," he insisted. "And you should know that it gets kinda cold at night on this..." he hesitated, glancing at the bracelet musingly, "on _your_ island. Or, in point of fact,what_ was _your island. Could be _anyone's_ now, I imagine. Who can really say, but you, of course, when it was last you visited _your_ island." He wandered toward the entrance, carrying his upraised torch, and hesitated, listening for anything unusual. "Maybe who's visitin' it now – besides me - might be a better question, 'ey?"

The area by the arch was as unkempt as Jack had found it. There was, however, a light wind coming from the tunnel, stirring the leaves and brushing swirls of dust and dried mud ahead of it into the sunken room. Strangely enough, Jack noticed, not so much as a leaf drifted onto the placid green water.

"So you'venot reallybeen 'round _here,_ have you?" He cautiously addressed the blowing leaves; trailing behind and saw how clear and clean the water appeared as they passed. He knew that he'd seen fish before but none were evident. And where had gone the little statue head this time?

As quickly as it had come through, the wind died away, it's last act animating the seaweed loosely attached to the forearms of Mr. Snake Headdress. The ominous snake emblem itself seemed to catch fire in the torch's light as the pirate watched, suspicious.

Jack shivered and yanked the wavering torch back into the archway. Whew! Was it his imagination or had the place taken on a sort of disturbing we're-watching-you-intruder air about it since he'd uncovered the presumably long-concealed statue of the sea goddess?

"No, that was Percy's fault, " he reassured himself, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it didn't really count much who made the discovery – only that it might not bode well that it _had _been _made_.

And if the 'circlet of three' bracelet _had_ been secreted here by Calypso's devout followers ages ago, he would have_ no _idea where to search for it or what to do with it if he did find it. The thought, however, of anyone being capable of 'resurrecting' the Kraken left him cold.

'_Beckett wants the heart of Jones so that he can control the seas and answer to no one for unforgivable slaughter. Can you imagine anyone with that much power, Sparrow?'_

'_No, and I imagine none should have that power, ex-Commodore, not of the seas or us, or anywhere what matters to us. Yet you would no doubt seek your rank and honor restored to you for such a pitiable price and call me unprincipled?'_

'_I'd hardly consider those Letters of Marque you're holding to be a pitiable price.'_

"Shame 'bout Norrington, he was well on his way to becomin' a half-decent pirate," Jack observed.

A tentative look down at his bruised, barely-swollen knee said it was safe to put back on his boots. Absently shedding the warm covering, Jack set the torch inside a narrow stone pedestal vase he'd hardly noticed earlier beside the now-striped vines.

He'd just finished his right boot when the first sound of trickling water reached him. Odd, it didn't seem early enough for the incoming tide. Quickly he slipped into the second boot, wincing when soft leather touched his sore knee. Moments later, he stood in the archway again, staring in puzzlement at a very _dry_ Mr. Snake Headdress.

"Trust me, there's things," he gazed left, "such as cursed gold," he looked right, "severed beatin' hearts," he peered above," and silver bracelets," a glance behind, "of omnipotent use to owners or," he lowered his eyes and edged carefully toward the rim of the sunken room, "possessors what's best left … alone," he finished in a half-whisper, waiting, but not daring to watch the deeper shadows on the other side of the chamber. "Did I mention that I've always _liked_ Calypso even when she – er, technically – wasn't _really_ Calypso?"

When no foreboding shadow slunk away from its neighbor to refute that, Jack shrugged, convinced that he'd said all he could in his defense and– Ohh, wait, there _now_ seemed to be two bright purple semi-triangles serenely resting in the water almost within Portside's open-palmed reach.

Almost within _his_ reach – if Porty didn't mind a lowly pirate taking said gems, that is.

Old stone-faced Porty, as it turned out, apparently _did_ object to the idea because he stood stubborn guard between Jack and the prized stones. And the way the statue's arms were spread wide to encompass his side of the bowl-like enclosure, there was no possible way to get past them to get close enough.

Jumping into _that _water held less appeal than splashing amongst sharks outside the cove. _Fire Streak's _habitat or no, there was something not natural here and it unnerved him.

'_So, not waiting for the opportune moment this time, Jack?_' Will mocked inside his head.

"It's not like there's gonna really be one," the pirate groused, not appreciating it when his own words came back to taunt him in the voice of the former blacksmith.

He had no other choice but to go straight under Portside's muscular left forearm. No, not a prospect he would enjoy, but fortunately, none of the statues stood flush with the pool's upper wall. Still, they were close enough to make maneuvering inside the narrow spaces a tricky, but not impossible venture.

Jack promised himself that he would only attempt it once to appease the impatient side of him who'd rather be off finding his way out of the place.

For this single-minded pirate, however, one try was all it took for an unmitigated disaster and the temple's chamber would never look the same again.

In retrospect, Jack supposed that he should have suspected a _lower_-side outletfilter being situated where he might not _immediately _see it. But really, how could he have guessed that Porty would quite _literally_ end his pool-sentinel days as a frail built, weak-kneed failure?

ooooo

TBC

AN: Back-story not derived from CotBP, DMC or AWE, is courtesy of the _Seas of Justice Chronicles_. For more information – please see My Profile.

In _SoJ_ _Book 3_, disguised as a cabin boy on Beckett's flagship, Tia Dalma offered the aforementioned crab talisman to a condemned Jack for the possible return of the sunken _Wench_. _Book 2 - Price of Resurrection_ is currently (April '08) a WIP.


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